jbraynolds

Have to disagree with the Cafe Annie comments. Ben Berryhill is the most talented chef in Houston that I know and may be the best in the entire state. There has been a change in the wine program (the sommelier/buyer moved to CA to run the Thomas Keller programs) but the wine list has good choices from top to bottom. Their lunch deal is great, $25ish if I recall. If you're after food as your primary focus, sit in the bar area, the service is more casual but friendlier, I think. I've had very good food at Indika but it's a bit of a hike. Pappas Bros. Steakhouse is consistent and has a great wine program. Mark's can be excellent but has to be one of the loudest restaurants in the US, Boulevard Bistrot is maddeningly inconsistent but when she is on, she's on. I would skip Aries at all costs as I have never had a good dish there (four visits). Goode Co. BBQ is convenient and consistent, sometimes superb. For more "real" bbq I like Drexler's but the neighborhood is a bit dicey. Same with Frenchy's if you like fried chicken. And don't miss James Coney Island but skip the corn dogs (too sweet, but I guess they usually are). In Dallas, I love York St. It's one of my favorite restaurants in the US. No lunch and closed on Monday (and Sunday, I think). If I had a single meal in Dallas it would be here. Close behind is Lola, which is sort of two restaurants in one, a casually luxe place on the left and on the right is an over-the-top Charlie Trotter type of thing, The Tasting Room. I have loved every meal in both spots and the new chef for the "regular" Lola is outstanding, formerly of Aubergine in Laguna Beach. Suze is usually superb and Tei Tei has wonderful sushi/sashimi as well as cooked dishes. Nana's can be nice and has a great view (maybe go for drinks). For steaks, there is a Pappas Bros. outlet with a wine program that matches the Houston original and there is also Bob's, which is like a little, slightly tatty private club. I've also had good steaks at Nick & Sam's and Dallas Del Frisco's (NOT the Ft. Worth outlet). Mia's is good for old-fashioned Dallas Tex-Mex and I like Dodie's and Dodie's Gulf Coast for VERY casual New Orleans/Gulf cooking. If Steel is still open, don't go there! For bbq, the original Sonny Bryan's, on Inwood, is inconsistent but can be great, if you're lucky. More modern bbq at Holy Smokes but they have great side dishes. Three of my favorite hamburger places, period, are in Dallas - Goff's (the psycho owner is a bit off-putting), Prince and Keller's. Note that Keller's is a drive-in and you probably don't want to sit inside of Prince.

Robyn (I know that this should not be on the NY board, sorry!): www.joelrestaurant.com Nice site. Great place.

Mark beat me to the punch. I just got off the phone with a few sommeliers at high-end places around the country and there needs to be a distinction made, which Mark points out: pours for pairings/degustations vs. "by the glass" ("BTG", in industry-speak). The consensus that I got was, roughly, 5 ounces for BTG, ie: you come into, say, Bacchanalia, and order a glass of Pouilly-Fume. You get about 5 ounces. For pairings/degustations, it's a bit over half the BTG pour. Fast drinkers are sometimes topped up so there aren't empty glasses sitting around the table, which makes the wine staff uncomfortable. I guess the burning question in this case is whether or not the pours at AD/NY were pairing-sized or standard BTG-sized? I don't know as I've always ordered bottles.

Not to stray too far into the Southeast board here but you must be talking about the Buckhead Ritz. The wine side is run by a very talented, bright and energetic guy who's one of the best in the country, Michael McNeill...he's also a Master Sommelier. He was at Lespinasse here in NY for a while. Great wine program there, I agree completely. Try Joel if you get a chance as their wine program is also excellent.

Depending on the glass used, 3 to 3.5 ounces is fine. If it's a broad, bowl-shaped one you'll usually get a bit more so the restaurant doesn't look chintzy. No problem for them, though, as they can make it up with slender Champagne flutes and sleek (European) white wine glasses. Champagne and dessert wines are the big money opportunity as the more elegant the glass, the smaller the volume.

The 7-8 pours per bottle assumes, obviously, a 3-3.5 ounce pour. That's standard. Any more is overfilling the glass, which a restaurant like AD/NY wouldn't do. And they don't give out re-fills. For dessert wines, assuming they're using the industry luxury-standard Riedel glasses, the pours are more like 2 ounces. By the way, the worst recent shafting on wine-pairing I've ever suffered was a couple of months ago at Seeger's, in Atlanta. 4 glasses, two of them sweet wines (a Ste. Croix du Mont for the foie gras terrine starter, a Muscat Beaumes de Venise for the apple beignet dessert). So I got a total of about 10 ounces of wine for $50.

Good point: A (maybe A+) food, A+ setting/room, A+ service (best I've experienced in the U.S., perhaps), A+ paraphenalia (china, crystal, linens, etc.) and a low C to high D wine program. You should check out the prices on the trophy wines, like classed-growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy, by the way. They make the other high-end French places in NYC look like Manducati's.

You can look up the retail prices for the wines that were served by going to www.wine-searcher.com and poking around. The Alion skews things a bit as it retails in the high $40s while the other stuff is in the sub-$20 retail range. In some cases the barely-above $10 range. This is shameful and shameless.

Sadly, Harrald is closing his restaurant in Stormville. Well-earned and deserved retirement awaits. Maisonette, the restaurant in Cincinnati, is a different place now as well, thanks to the city's bad run of luck over the last few years as well as their attempt to accomodate changing tastes (they used to do "Continental", which basically doesn't exist any longer, for better or worse). And, irony of ironies, I have been working for Rosenthal for twelve years now.

I can't name a single restaurant in the country (or in Europe...even Veyrat) that has the wine mark-ups that Ducasse takes at AD/NY. The closest that I can name in the obscene-beyond-belief category is Mon Ami Gabi at The Paris in Las Vegas, where they sell a $7.00 bottle (wholesale cost) Echelon Pinot Noir for $56.00. And this was a hot topic in the industry (my industry, by the way) when they sprang it. 8 times? That's all they can do? What a bunch of pikers. You can't accuse Ducasse of taking a back seat, that's for sure. I'm puzzled by the Arpege story as I've found good choices in Champagne, whites and reds for under 100 Euros for full bottles. Maybe things have changed, as they do.

Okay, only about 12x. What a deal!

I'm still waiting for someone to refute the assertion that 15x (!!!!) is excessive mark-up for wine or that a restaurant of ADNY's stature is serving non-French, borderline peasant wines by the glass. Please, refute at will.

Actually, I have asked some of the world's top chefs (yes, in France) what they think of Ducasse. The usual, diplomatic response is "he's a great businessman", "he's very successful", "he has made a great name for himself"...things like that. The food part of the discussions is virtually a non-issue. Hey, chapeau, as they say.

Sorry. Overstated, as usual. Puck has nothing close to ADNY, Paris or Monaco. Highly-regarded, expensive places, yes. AD-level, no way.

I'm sure that I'm throwing gasoline on a fire here but Ducasse, in my view, is more like Wolfgang Puck than anybody else. He has figured out a way to make a fortune by setting up various levels of restaurants, semi-casual to over-the-top formal, all over the place with wealthy partners. Unlike Puck, he has been able to preserve his repuation, in some quarters at least, as a genuinely serious, high-luxe chef. But he for sure isn't a Michel Bras or Olivier Roellinger, running one place where he can be a complete hard-ass.

Lest anyone forget, ADNY is supported by Westin. One of the more shrewd moves by Ducasse is partnering up with deep pockets (Westin, Jeffrey Chodorow, Plaza Athenee, Intercontinental Hotels, etc.). His personal, financial risk isn't anything close to that of an independent restauranteur. But his margins are greater.

Let me preface by saying that I really, really like the food at ADNY. I've had some superb meals there. It's the pricing that makes me wince. Fwiw, the total RETAIL (not the wholesale price that the restaurant pays) for full bottles of all five wines that were served is $125.00, which means that ADNY paid about $80.00. That's for the bottles, which would, realistically, serve seven to eight diners. So call their wine cost per head about, what, $12.00? Whoah. What was the price for the pairing? And, maybe another subject entirely, I wouldn't expect to be served a French VdP, an Italian white, a Long Island red, a Spanish red and a Croatian wine at one of the flagship restaurants of this most vaunted of FRENCH chefs. Maybe at Mix, but at ADNY????

I would argue that it was the media that CREATED Ducasse as "heir to Escoffier". You don't convince the world that you're the greatest chef of a generation when you're serving simply roasted fish, pasta and salads (which is what he was doing in Monaco when he started to get so much press) without the media there to cheerlead for you.

Good question: why do so many people feel obliged to start tossing around the "get me some...", "get a mess o'....", "fine eatin'" type phrases when they discuss bbq and Southern food in general? Or have to use "Hon" when discussing Maryland crabcakes, or "y'all" when Texas is the subject? Or "Oy!" when it's NY delis? These are usually the same ones who can't just say "New Orleans" when they can say "N'Awlins" (rarely, if ever, people who are actually from there, by the way).

The crab/beet/horseradish salad is tied-and-true. And I have seen gorgeous jumbo lump lately, albeit of probably foreign origin.

In that area, heading south to north, I like Sushi-Ko, Heritage India, 2 Amy's and Palena. Those are some of my favorite places in DC regardless of geography, as a matter of fact. There's even a Popeye's around there, and Rockland's.

Hands down, the best are at First, on 1st Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets. They're trimmed down to a "lollipop" state and are just incredible. Good luck on only eating one order.

Thanks for the heads-up on this!

I'd eat that. I think I'll give it a go tomorrow, as a matter of fact.

Unfortunately, the Llano Cooper's isn't able to alter their cooking temperature. It's an equipment problem as well as a volume one. The place is an absolute madhouse, and, sorry to say, the quality has suffered as a result. Maybe this ought to be moved over to the Texas boards...