vengroff

I haven't yet had the pleasure, but I like its little brother, the Taurino Salice Salentino '99 a lot. It's 80% Negroamoro and 20% Malvasia Rossa, and can be had for under $10. Far bigger cherry and earth than is typical of the price range.

Black cod is actually sablefish, so you may find some recipes for the latter. Here are some details on the fish.

Didn't Ed Bartles and Rick James make a killing off this idea in the 80's?

Dinner for four: House made wild mushroom ravioli; Roast monkfish with herbs (Bittman's dead-simple recipe); Rocket salad; Pear frangipane tart.

Spicy-smooth black bean soup with chevre at Firefly. You need look no further.

Copyright © 2003, Al Dente's guide to the all-time worst pick-up lines.

Perhaps the solution is to always post the price range directly adjacent to the star rating. Then certain places with four star aspirations will be clearly shown to be nothing more than overpriced two stars. They won't look good in the ratings unless they improve their food or lower their prices so that that offer value consistent with their competitors.

Give New Big Wong a try. Notice all the fish tanks when you walk in. The last time we went there they had live: razor clams, shrimp, dungeness crabs, lobsters and bass. The XO sauce rocked. I had the best fried rice of my life there, the "special" fried rice with scallops and lobster. I have immesurable respect for any place that serves live dungeness crab on the east coast, and even more for a place that does it here in the heart of blue crab country. But it's best after 2am, no?

If someone opened a Pollo Loco around here, I'd be in line.

Seems logical to me. Excellent. If you don't hear any more from me in this forum today it's because I'm busy filling out forms and waiting in the queue at the patent office. I've just devised a radically innovative new breakthrough in the field of magnetic enhancement of wine, and I need to protect it.

The assumption that the wine pours in a laminar way and not turbulent is an improbable hypothesis considering the way the fluid looks when poured out of a bottle. And when we find turbulent fluid dynamics and variable angles consequently, it gets very complicated. So I think we can't exclude physical interdependence a priori and hence an influence is to be expected (at least not excluded). As for the order of magnitude .... this is subject to speculation for me. I'll admit I idealized the flow. There's also some slight curvature to the flux lines in the neck of the bottle, so we could take that into account too. Would you be happier if I had said that the first order effect is minimized? The point is that if you wanted to minimize the effect of the magnets on any charged particles passing through the neck of the bottle, you would put them parallel to the neck, exactly as the clip does. If you wanted to maximize it, you would arrange them so the field cut across the neck, perpendicular to the bottle's axis. That way you would be sure to induce force on any charged particles leaving the bottle whether the flow was smooth or not.

Perhaps I missed something, but what are the criteria for being included in the guide in the first place?

I think Two Quail deserved every star it got...

You got that right! And Chef Fowke provided the trussing technique. I don't even mind doing the dishes--but that's got to wear off soon.

I can't speak for Palena, but convection roasting is a good way to get crisp-skinned chicken. Like this one

I guess I just don't understand this implication that science lacks the tools to analyze the wine clip's effect on wine. It's quite pervasive in this thread, and I'm not sure why. We're not talking about the deepest darkest secrets of the universe here. It's some straightforward organic chemistry. With the aid of Mark's report on tasters' perceptions, we have long since established a working hypothesis that wine which passes through the clip gets a big initial boost of oxidation. We know the primary reactions that take place as wine oxidizes in a glass. We know how to measure the concentrations of the substances involved in these reactions and related substances that contribute to flavor and aroma--things like tannins, gallic acid, esters, phenols, and so on. So why is it so far fetched to think that we could conduct experiments to determine if their concentrations vary in clipped vs. unclipped wine? There are many people who believe that God intervenes in their daily lives. That's their business. But I have to wonder why someone would extend this kind of blind faith to some magnets around a bottle of wine.

In this day and age of loose interpretation, anything served in a martini glass is considered a martini. Many are made with far worse than Courvoisier.

Before I go through more of the confused science in our anonymous guest's remarks, I'd like to focus on one of his conclusions. I almost don't know where to begin on this. It all but denies the relevence of science in society. No, it goes farther than that; it characterizes science as actively detrimental. It boggles the mind that anyone could seriously make such a broadly indefensible statement. I ask you, for the sake of argument, to consider pharmacuticals. There are millions of people alive today because they have been given drugs that careful scientific scrutiny has shown behave radically differently than placebos. Here's another one: gasoline. If our friend is right then surely science can show that it's a placebo and I can run my car just as well by putting water in the tank. But it's simply not true. No scientific inquiry would ever lead you to believe that gasoline and water combust in similar ways. Finally, closer to home, compare an high-falutin' organic free-range pork chop to a modern genetic hybrid factory-farmed pork chop. The difference in taste perception that people have can be explained almost entirely by the fact that one has a lot more fat in it than the other. Any serious scientific inquiry into the difference between the two would notice the fat difference. It couldn't be missed. If people want to buy a wine clip, that's up to them, and fine with me. But if they want to ridicule the scientific method in order to feel better about the vendor's inability to explain how it works, that's just farcical.

I read what he wrote, and unfortunately, I can't say that I see the same sense that you do. To begin with, consider his statement, "when a conductor or conductive fluid (in this case wine) passes through a magnetic field, an electrical charge is created." I would suggest that if you wrote that on a high-school physics exam, you would not get much credit at all. The movement of a conductor through a magnetic field does not create charge. It just doesn't. What our anonymous magnet guy may be referring to is the behavior of charged particles moving through magnetic fields. This is well understood, and has been for quite a long time. Charged particles moving through magnetic fields experience a force perpendicular to the plane containing the direction of motion and the direction of the magnetic field through which the charged particle is moving. The magnitude of this force is proportional to, among other things, the sine of angle between the direction of motion and the magnetic field. This actually brings up another interesting point, which is that in the wine clip design, it appears that the direction of travel of the wine as it is poured is parallel to the flux lines of the magnetic fields from the rod-shaped magnets that surround it. This means that the angle between the direction of motion of the wine and the direction of the magnetic field is zero, thus its sine is zero, thus there is no force on any charged particle in the wine, or dipolar molecule (one with a different concentration of charge at each end) the wine might contain. If you wanted the maximum induced force, you would put a horseshoe-shaped magnet around the spout of the bottle so that the wine would flow in a direction perpendicular to the magnetic field. I have more comments on what he said, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.

OK, here's my fearless prediction: Some time between six and eighteen months from now this product line will be deemed a failure and yanked from the menu. Internal BK analysys of the product, the marketing campaign, and consumer reaction will conclude: 1. Existing regular customers tried the product once or twice and went back to their familiar whopper. 2. New customers brought in by the idea of getting something healthy and good tasting tried the product a few times and then gave up and didn't come back. This was equally true whether they knew who Rick Bayless was or not. 3. There was some limited success with vetoers, i.e. those who would veto going to BK with a carload of friends because they didn't like it. Enticed by the idea of the new product, they would refrain from vetoing, leading to the sale of one chicken sandwich and three whoppers. After a couple of visits the vetoers, like the category 2 people, gave up, and went back to vetoing burger joints. After yanking the product, BK executives will scratch their heads and try to figure out what innovative new product to introduce next. If they are extremely lucky, one of them will remember an article from the Wall Street Journal that morning about some other company going back to it's "core business" and succeeding. He or she will propose that BK do the same, and start cooking fresh flame-broiled burgers.

Ms. Immer, Thanks for stopping by to clarify these issues for us. If I may, I'd like to make a few comments on your criteria for recommending wines. My overall impression is that putting 1, 3, and 4 together produces results akin to what the Zagats do for restaurants. Item 2 seems to be something they don't have, although there is some debate as the the extent to which their editors tailor the quotes and descriptions to their own tastes. Now Tim and Nina certainly have a very successful and influential franchise, but if you look around this site you will see their methods and results questioned fairly regularly. To me, the greatest service an expert can provide is to guide me to interesting bottles that I didn't even know existed. If you had asked me a year ago whether Gruner Veltliner was a grape or the name of the mayor of Dusseldorf, I might have guessed the latter. But given some good advice and recommendations, I now love the stuff. Often, the best expert recommendations are for reasonably priced wines from medium-scale producers. These places don't have big advertizing budgets and their names are not on the tips of consumers' tongues. They may not be on the shelf at Target, but they can be found at many a local wine shop. In most cases, total neophytes can appreciate them as much or more than the mass-market labels. I think it would be great if your show could feature wines in this category. P.S. I'm sorry to hear about your baguette situation. How far do you have to go for a good croissant?

I like the Enate Crianza Somontano, which should be in the $10-15 price range you are looking for. It's a lesser known region than Rioja, but Enate produces some nice wine. They also have a good Rose, if you want to go that way with the fish.

It appears that there has been some independent research done on the extent to which glass shape influences wine chemistry and taste. Here is a summary of some work done last year. Unfortunately, I think the only way to get the full report is to get your hands on a printed back issue of New Scientist.

Why does he need to join here? People are regularly slammed that never even heard of eGullet. They've made a public claim on a public website. Here is their e-mail address: info@riedelusa.com Rick Bayless never appeared here. Look what happened to him. OK, I'll shoot them an email today and see what comes up. But there are thousands of other sites out there making claims that may or may not have any scientific basis. I asked Mr. Clip to support his because I woke up one morning and there they were in my face on eGullet. The claims sounded quite unusual. Even those like Mark who now think it has an effect were skeptical initially. I wanted to read a copy of the patent Mr. Clip said he had, which he now says he does not have. He says it is pending, but anyone can fill out some forms and have a patent pending for a squirrel-powered car or whatever other crazy invention they can think up. In fact, here is a book about how to get a patent pending in 24 hours. Patent pending doesn't mean the patent will ever be granted, or even applied for, or that the invention does anything. I asked for a report from the Ph.D.s he said had tested his product. I haven't gotten it yet. There may be an inconclusive report on another product somewhere on the web, but I haven't been able to find it.

I don't own either Riedel glasses or a wine clip. I buy my stemware by the dozen from a restaurant supply store. If I decide I want to magnetize my wine, I will spend $6 on some rare-earth magnets rather than $79 for a clip. I'll put the savings into wine. If anyone can entice Mr. Riedel to join us here, I will ask him for copies of any patents or research reports he may have, just as I asked Mr. Clip for his.