g.johnson

And 620% wine markups at Ducasse. Though Fat Guy speculates that this may be the case at other four stars.

Depends on how tightly defined the categories are. If your doing "Top French", "Top New American", etc., etc., five is about right. If it's "Top Top Restaurants" you might want to make it larger. It doesn't have to be rigid, though. "Top French" would have to be six to include all four stars, moreif you want to add Atelier, Le Cirque, etc. "Top New American" will be even harder to confine to five.

I know, perhaps I wasn't clear. I think there should be a larger number of entries in categories covering "destination restaurants" (ugh) than ethnic restaurants, say. Ron Johnson, for example, appears to be doing at least two nose-bleedingly expensive French restaurants on his trip. I doubt he'll be doing more than one dim sum.

My one meal at Daniel was better than my last meal at Jean-George. Then again, I prefered Nougatine* to either. Go figure. *Ron: Nougatine is Jean-Georges less formal restaurant at the same location, if you didn't know.

Depends on restaurant type, I think. I don't think many would want to go the more than one dim sum restaurant but they may want to go to several of the 3/4 star places so there should be more of those.

Wot Wilf and Toby said.

A rather old FDA article.

GJ: I'm not pulling your chain nor nitpicking but I wanted to know what you meant by western indian ? Sorry, my ambiguity. I meant Indian restaurants in the west, specifically the US and UK.

There are an enormous number of different potential flavourings from plants. Some, obviously, are poisonous. But there must be gazillions of things out there that we could use to flavour food. But most we don't use, either because they taste unpleasant or because we can't taste them. So, although I agree that the details are culturally influenced, it seems quite possible to me that people are programmed to like certain types of flavour.

No, it’s a fair question, you sarky gits. Why do we like certain flavours? It’s either chance which seems unlikely or there’s some evolutionary reason for it.

I know and agree -- I was responding to soba's post.

I disagree that TBB is not Indian. There some exotic touches, but it serves tandoori shrimp, chicken tikka masala (not authentic, I know, but typical of Western Indian restaurants) and nan.

We're not necessarily talking about preserving but sterilizing fresh produce. Not that I'm convinced either.

Are you buying?

Partial answer. Shirreffs SM, Maughan RJ: Restoration of fluid balance after exercise-induced dehydration: effects of alcohol consumption. J Appl Physiol 1997; 83(4):1152-8 (Emphasis added.)So dilute alcohol is OK, but at around 4% it starts to have a deleterious effect. However, the effect doesn’t look particularly marked since they didn’t find a statistically significant difference in the volume of urine produced nor did they find an actively dehydrating effect. But then again 4% is a lot less than you find in wine.

The stuff that was drunk at breakfast was 'small beer' and very low in alcohol content.

I think it's possible.

I don’t think it’s a good idea. You get dehydrated as much from drinking beer as from drinking spirits. As I mentioned on the other thread, boiling your first growths would drive off the alcohol which has a boiling point of around 80C. You could then drink the remains.

Alcohol is a diuretic so drinking it would be a bad idea unless you boiled off the alcohol first.

Follow the example of the players. Marijuana and beer.

We simply do not know that if this is true because no one has tried to do it. I disagree, it can be extrordinarily subtle at Diwan. But even if that were not the case, we could not make this assumption without eating the food of the best Indian chefs (presumably in India).

It’s because cumin is a bold flavour that it has to be used with subtlety and restraint. Bunging a load of cumin into a curry is the surest way to ruin it. On the other hand it’s dead easy to make French food taste better by bunging in a load of cream. I know, I do it all the time.

One reason people pay more for Indian food is because it's SUBTLE. The flavors sometime have to be discovered, worked to comprehend, and effort has to be made to appreciate the layers, the progression of flavors, the development in the mouth. Butter and cream are in your face - right there on the tongue, right away. It doesn't take a lot of work to "get" a French dish, no matter how skilled the chef. It's the nature of the dairy. I think it's the same with most Western cuisines - the skill involved in the preparation of Indian food MUST be at a higher level than the western cuisines, because it doesn't have cream to hide behind. The interesting tastes have to be milked, as it were, put forward with skill, and deliberately.

And, by a marvellous coincidence, these spices also grow in hot climates.

This site says that cod is cold smoked like haddock. Interestingly, Arbroath Smokies, the king of the smoked haddock are hot smoked. Anyone think that 'smoke' looks an odd word? Or am I just having a petit mal attack?