robyn

Bruni's implication could not be further from the truth, as sneak and nathan have already suggested. Hell, last time I was there, it literally was about a 3 1/2 hour meal. And a damn good one, at that. ← Guess you can't believe everything you read in the papers these days. I gave up on the NYT in a lot of areas a long time ago - but if even the food reporting isn't credible - maybe I'll just save 400 bucks a year and use it to buy a swell pair of shoes. Robyn

Bruni implied in his review that it was an "eat and get out" kind of place: "And the backless stools at the counter and tables, the possibility of hour-plus waits, the absence of any coffee or tea and the one throwaway dessert, a mochi ice cream sampler, add up to a few inconveniences more than even many free-spirited diners will want to endure...Mr. Chang doesn’t really want you to linger." Note that I have been in some very high end restaurants like this - e.g., high end sushi restaurants in Japan. They have their place. It's a question of what you're looking for in a restaurant. Robyn ← well, you're certainly not likely to linger over coffee for a half hour at the end of your meal. but frankly, it's hard to explain if you haven't been there. ← Perhaps it's hard to explain quantum mechanics - or a perfect golf swing - in words - but a restaurant really shouldn't be that hard. So try me. Robyn

Bruni implied in his review that it was an "eat and get out" kind of place: "And the backless stools at the counter and tables, the possibility of hour-plus waits, the absence of any coffee or tea and the one throwaway dessert, a mochi ice cream sampler, add up to a few inconveniences more than even many free-spirited diners will want to endure...Mr. Chang doesn’t really want you to linger." Note that I have been in some very high end restaurants like this - e.g., high end sushi restaurants in Japan. They have their place. It's a question of what you're looking for in a restaurant. Robyn

I can understand just about every conceivable dining preference. But remember, somebody is reserving all of those tables at Per Se. It's almost like Yogi Berra's old comment, "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded." ← I'm not saying Per Se isn't crowded. It is so crowded during normal dining hours - presumably with big shots - that out-of-towners like me (and probably "lesser" people who live in New York) can't get reservations except at silly dining hours (too early or too late for most peoples' tastes). I think all this generational stuff may be overblown. If you are a 20 or 30-something person or couple - and you want to have dinner with friends you haven't seen for a while so you can talk and catch up on things - do you want to meet them someplace at 7:30 pm and then wait on line for over a hour so you can be rushed in and out of dinner in less than an hour? I don't think so - but perhaps I am wrong. And I don't think you'd normally want to go to a place like Per Se either. Simply because most dinner dates aren't planned 2 months in advance (most of our dinner dates with friends are planned maybe 3 or 4 days in advance). I think most people - regardless of age - would like a place with good food where you can make a reservation on fairly short notice and have a really good meal served at a reasonable pace. Sadly - there aren't many like that where I live - so we usually settle for decent meals in pleasant surroundings. But I assume New York has more options than the small city where I live. Robyn P.S. My interest in New York isn't idle. Think I'll be going there for a family function in May - and we'll probably try to arrange a dinner or two with (also) out of town cousins (although some are out of town from - like Staten Island ). We all like good food - none of us will wait on line for an hour - especially after spending the day flying in - and we definitely don't want the "bum's rush" when we eat. We once had a great "cousin's dinner" for 10 at Nobu. But Nobu is kind of old news these days. OTOH - perhaps it's still a very good restaurant.

What did you think of Salt? Better than the old restaurant? Did you have the tasting menu? We had lunch at the RC a month or so ago (and it was quite good) - but haven't had time to get up there for dinner at Salt yet. Robyn

I'm curious. What kinds of meals do you all think are appropriate at a place like this? The "grab a bite" after a late night at the office meal (when - presumably - there is little or no wait)? The "grab a bite" before an early movie/show meal (when - presumably - there is also little or no wait)? Those sound ok. Can't see anyone waiting on line during "prime time" for a long time and then being rushed through dinner on a date (whether you're a 30 or 50 year old single or a married person on a "date" with your spouse). Or doing the same thing when you're having dinner with some friends. Am I wrong? I like good food - but - unless you're alone - eating is also a social experience. And waiting on line for a long time - and then being rushed through meals - isn't conducive to pleasant social experiences IMO. I know people do it all the time. You'll wait 1-2 hours at any upscale casual chain restaurant here on a Saturday night. I just don't know what the point of it is. BTW - I can also understand people not wanting to make a reservation at Per Se 60 days in advance to have dinner at "early bird special" times. Robyn

As fun as it is to watch them cut the fries at Ted's, I don't eat their french fries when I go there, because I really don't like them. They do cut their fries all day long, but then they give them only one frying, whereas "blanching" the fries, cooling them, then frying them at 375 for service gives the right crispness that I prefer. An aside: I am truly a prick about what french fries I will or will not eat because, at my age, height and weight, a lousy french fry is simply not worth the calorie expenditure, for me. Your mileage may vary. At any rate, I did mention the procedure for french fries at the small-ish chain (47 restaurants, currently) where I work in the eGullet foodblog that is linked at the bottom of my posts. It involves a good deal of work, and of the 5 walk-ins that are there, one is entirely devoted to the french fries that have been cut, rinsed, drained, spun in a salad spinner, blanched in 300 degree oil, drained again, and then chilled while waiting their finishing fry for service. If one cannot devote that sort of time/energy/space/labor to making terrific french fries, then it is understandable that frozen french fries (which I prefer over what Ted's serves, unfortunately) are a reasonable alternative. I am not that familiar with what is added to frozen french fries, or whether they are blanched, then frozen, or what specific blend of preservatives, sugars and such are added to the particular brand that Keller chooses to serve at Bouchon. However, I agree with you, wholeheartedly, that knowing, first hand, that the from-scratch version can be done on even a very large scale for a very large volume of guests, makes me think much less of Keller, as a chef. I would have thought that his dedication to ingredients would dictate otherwise. I am a fan of his work, but I've never been fortunate enough to eat his food, outside of the things I've replicated from his cookbooks, if it makes any difference. ← I must admit that I haven't paid really close attention to what happens to the fries at our local Ted's. I just like to watch the employees cut them up in the slicing device . Thwomp - and you have a pile of uncooked fries. But then they are put in water - don't know the temp. Then in one fry thing - then another right before serving. Can't say how they taste - because I've never eaten them (I usually like the braised things there - like braised bison ribs - and they don't go well with fries.) I am with you when it comes to eating fries in general. I don't like them that much to start with (they are frequently served cold and kind of mushy) - and I can't afford the calories - so I don't eat them very often. And most of the time I eat them - it's at home - a grilled burger and some fresh out of the oven crispy frozen Ore-Ida "fast fries" (which I guess are supposed to be like those served at some chain fast food places). At least at home - they are hot and crisp. I also agree with you that if Keller can't make any fries better than Sysco's frozen (which every restaurant here where I live buys by the ton) - I think a lot less of him as a chef. Robyn

I don't eat french fries that often. When I eat them at home - they're frozen - and ok. When I eat them out - I expect them to be fresh. If Ted's Montana Grill (a chain) can make fresh from scratch (hundreds of servings a day) - there's no reason Bouchon can't do it do. By the way - it's fun to sit at the counter facing the "line" at a Ted's Montana Grill - and watching them make the french fries from scratch. Robyn

How about Sgt. White's Diner? Robyn

Certainly true. Sometimes in these cases I'll run for the hills, but other times I'll take a couple of steps back and see that in spite of all the theory, these people have doing this for years (and maybe it's a tradition that goes back farther than that) and no one seems to be dying, so maybe they actually know what they're doing with that mop bucket and used meat! ← The fact that more people don't die from improper food handling is a great tribute to the strength of most of our immune systems. As with most diseases - food poisoning tends to kill mostly the very young - the very old - and other people whose immune systems aren't terrific. People who have good immune systems may have some fleeting minor GI problems - or feel nothing at all. FWIW - all meatballs can be dangerous (although some can be more dangerous than others) - since the act of turning meat into chopped meat can take nasty things on the outside of the meat - where they're easy to kill by cooking - and put them inside the meatball - where they're harder to kill. I was looking through some meatball recipes this week - and I was surprised that a lot called for taking raw meatballs and "simmering" them for maybe 15 minutes in sauce to "cook" them. Seemed like a pretty dangerous way to deal with chopped meat. Robyn

The fine dining side was not open on that night... ← The fine dining side is open 7 days a week. Seems to have been closed for a few days in December before Christmas - so I guess that's when you were there. But - normally - this chef would not be in L'Atelier - correct? Robyn

"Executive Chef Claude Le Tohic of Joel Robuchon at the MGM" If this guy was working at L'Atelier - who was holding down the fort at the Mansion - where a couple was paying maybe $1000 for dinner for 2? Robyn

Thanks for the feedback on Kyoto. From what I've been reading, that train station sounds like a destination in itself! We will have fun exploring there. Re: Tokyo department store foods, I am surprised to hear that there are no tables to eat at. I knew that it wasn't cool to walk around while eating, so I guess I assumed it was set up similar to a food court with tables and chairs. Where do the Japanese eat the foods they buy there? Do they carry it back to home or the office? ← Torakris has basically answered this question. But - no matter what you plan on spending - I think you should try to avoid dumbing down your food to the tastes of a picky 10 year old eater. You can - of course - do it in Japan. At McDonald's or KFC and the like. Just seems like a waste of a very long trip. Robyn

In Kyoto - there are a large number of restaurants with plastic food (WYSIWYG) in the mall underneath the train station (as well as restaurants in the train station (go up the escalators to - I think - about the 7th floor). Low - medium - and lower high end. A lot of places with bento box type meals. With a 10 year old - even if she throws half away - it should be enough food. Should suffice for 2 days in Kyoto. The department stores in Tokyo do have lots of food - but what you're talking about for the most part is take-out - and the Japanese frown on eating in public (like while you're walking down the street). So where would you eat the food you buy there? A lot of the department store basements in Tokyo do have sit down restaurants - but the food there wasn't that terrific from what I saw. And they're not like food courts where you can buy things from a lot of different places - and use the seats to eat. I suspect your best bet would be to buy non-perishable stuff in the department store basement grocery sections that you know she will eat - like the fixings for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Pack meals for her in your hotel and take them with you when you explore restaurants. Since she is 10 - and the Japanese are very friendly to children (except perhaps in really high end places) - she'll have somethng to eat - and she won't limit your choices. Robyn

I thnk that's a cute idea - using a paper shredder to cut food (assuming you keep it oiled with an edible oil instead of 3 in 1 oil ). What's wrong with the idea? Robyn

I let our lemons sweeten up unti last week - when I had to harvest them due to an impending freeze. Wound up with over 40. I tried to mail some to friends - but found out it is now illegal to mail citrus from Florida without a USDA license due to canker problems. In any event - last week there was an article in the NYT dining section with recipes for lemons. Tried the spaghetti limone - and it was fabulous. You can find it on the NYT website. Robyn

Isn't the issue whether he's opening restaurants that are serving food that people want to eat at a price they're willing to pay? His name may bring them in the door - but if he's not doing the former - whether the places are high end - middle of the road - or low end - he'll have a problem. In any event - I had an excellent meal at Tom Aikens last time I was in London - enjoyed meeting Chef Aikens - and wish him good luck. BTW - in terms of "empires" - you forgot Georges Blanc - who didn't so much build a "food empire" as a "food town". Robyn

I think you'll find the original meat and threes hard to find these days. We found a new variation in White Springs FL a few weeks ago. The "meat and three" with a lunch buffet. Fried chicken and pork chops and meat loaf and lots of veggies - but in a buffet format. Was really quite good. So I wouldn't necessarily pass up a place that looks ok just because it serves a buffet. Robyn

I think the most telling part of your comment was about the food - that it was fabulous. Restaurants - like hotels - homes - whatever - do get old and tired after about 20 years. And it is at that point that their owners have to decide whether to bite the bullet and spend a lot of money updating them - or sell them - or let them slide slowly into decay. That is a problem being faced especially by luxury hotels these days. Those Ritz Carltons and Four Seasons from the 70's and 80's have to be redone - or abandoned (and in many cases they're simply being sold - abandoned - and new properties are being built). The worst in my opinion is when not only is the property tired - but the food is tired too - or exhausted. Quite a few years ago - I went to a famous French restaurant in New York. Can't remember the name (but those of you in New York might - it was one of 2 New York French restaurants that had almost identical names). It had received rave reviews from the New York Times which were hopelessly out of date. Well - we tried it - and it was awful. A sad caricature of a French restaurant from the 1950's (which was even before *my* time!). After that - as a general rule - I think it's best to avoid 20 year old restaurants with stars dating back at least a decade or more - or places which used to have X stars - but now have X minus 1 or 2. I break that rule once in a while - but usually regret it. The most fun is finding a place that is relatively new - but is hitting its stride after a year or two - and is clearly destined for bigger and better things. That is kind of hard to do when you're a tourist - but it happens every once in a while and it's great. There is so much restaurant hype in New York these days that I'm not sure this kind of thing is possible there. But who knows? I loved Tom Aikens in London - and there have to be people in New York opening restaurants like that who are flying just a bit under the national media radar - at least for a while. While Bruni is reviewing "Ninja" meets "Kobe beef" restaurants - there have to be more interesting things going on. And - if you go to lesser places (people from New York do go to places other than Miami Beach - yes ? - it's entirely possible). The kind of restaurant that might get the James Beard award for best restaurant in the northwest 8 years from now (4 years too late) - or the 1 star in a lesser city in Europe that might wind up with its third down the road. Or those millions of restaurants in countries virtually untouched by western journalism (which is just about every country outside of North American and western Europe) - where we will never hear anything. The wine issue is something else. And is really quite properly the subject of another thread (of which I recall a few here). Best I can tell - many restaurants haven't kept up with the trends in wines (a lot of very solid wines are relatively cheap these days). It is one thing to have a great expensive bottle. Quite another to have a mediocre extremely overpriced bottle. Overall - I have found that I am relatively lucky because still wine doesn't agree with me. I am very fond of champagne - familiar with the most common ones I'm most likely to find - and - overall - they aren't miserably overpriced in most places. I especially like restaurants with champagne trolleys - and that cool way the servers pour the bottles over the side of their arms. Give me a Plymouth martini before dinner - and some champagne with - and I'm a happy camper (with a relatively small liquor bill). Robyn

That restaurant isn't a fine dining place - it's a bistro with attitude (used to have a lot when I dined there a couple of times 20 years ago - luckily with a "friend of the restaurant") and I can only assume it has more now since Esquire (or maybe it was Vanity Fair) wrote it up in the last couple of years as the venue for a big birthday party for that famous American food writer who died recently (sorry - but I am never great at names and tonight I am terrible - I am sure someone can give me his name). That said - you were treated poorly. It is - unfortunately - all too easy to get treated poorly in restaurants both in the US and outside of it. Robyn

Well - I think part of this arises from the silliness of having dinners starting at 5:30 (when Per Se opens). I can see that at early bird specials in retirement areas in Florida - but not in fine dining restaurants in cosmopolitan cities. I don't care what restaurant I'm dealing with - after that 5:30 "seating" at Per Se - if I can't get a reservation at a reasonable dining time - I'm not going to eat there. I will note that I am willing to pay a fairly large premium these days for restaurants that have single seatings. It's simply an elegant way to dine. Robyn

Can't help you with eating at the airport. I don't live in Atlanta - but I do change planes there frequently. And it seems that every time I have to change planes there - I have about 25 minutes to get from terminal A to terminal Z! No time to breath - much less eat. One suggestion. Before you leave the airport - check the waits at the security lines coming in. They can be very variable at all airports depending on season/day/time of day. I'm a smoker - and I have to go outside to smoke at a lot of airports (although not Hartsfield) when I'm changing planes - and I always check that I won't have to spend an hour getting back in before I go outside. Robyn

Yes....I completely agree. I've dined at Per Se a number of times, and once, my partner asked our sommelier how it was he got into wine. "I used to be a waiter" he said, "But I realized there was a limit on the profit I and the restaurant could make with that. But not so with wine, so I pursued that." Can you imagine? Those words, even if true, would never be uttered in a European Michelin 3 star restaurant. ← That kind of fits with the recent NYT article about buying prime time reservations at NYC restaurants. Someone from Per Se was quoted as saying that they save the prime times for people who will spend tons of money on wine - as opposed to people who just want to eat and have modest drink (and - based on the article - it seems that anything less than $100/person for drink is considered modest). I find it interesting that at both of our bigger deal meals in Atlanta a few weeks ago - my husband had wine pairings which were both excellent and priced modestly. We met the bar/wine manager at the Four Seasons - chatted for a while - and she said that with the wine glut these days - it is relatively easy to serve nice pairings (or bar house wines) - nothing extraordinary - just good solid stuff - at prices that would be unheard of 5 years ago. So there is simply no excuse for paying a lot of money and getting relative garbage these days. Robyn

In my experience - people like my husband who are great white meat fans are not great fans of skin. So probably no harm done not doing the skin. I am not sure that chicken skin would hold up to separate cooking (if you're a home chef - it's really a delicate thing to deal with - very thin - hardly any fat). OTOH - you can do great things with turkey skin. Robyn

I've been to just one three-star restuarant in Europe, the Waterside Inn in Bray, so I certainly don't count as an expert. The Waterside Inn is one of the most lovely restaurant settings imaginable. However, I did not find the food there at all superior to Jean Georges or Per Se. Indeed, as food goes I would rate it a little lower.I'm even less of an expert on European wine service, but I found the wine program at Jean Georges sub-par even by my amateurish standards. At Per Se, there were no flaws that I was able to perceive. Time for another analogy. I got to The Waterside Inn about 20 minutes early, and had to wait in a hotel lounge before it opened. Should the star rating be different because one is physically located in a hotel, and the other in a mall? ← I am perhaps a bit more experienced - but I try to compare "apples with apples" (meals in recent years in the US with meals in recent years outside the US). Most recent experience I had was New York versus London in 2004-2005. Can't count Japan in 2006 - there's no Michelin guide there - and I pretty much stuck to Japanese restaurants (which are hard to compare to western restaurants). So we'll see what happens with Germany. Just curious - what didn't you like about the wine service at JG? What we didn't like was they just picked a positively dreadful bottle of wine for us. And it wasn't cheap - almost $100. Would have been better off with a $15 bottle from Costco. At Per Se - our server was relatively new - and obviously unfamiliar with the wines offered by the glass (apart from a bottle of champagne which we picked - the table was doing wines by the glass to pair with various dishes). As for waiting in a hotel - was it comfy? Could you have ordered a drink if you wanted to? In other words - was your wait pleasant? At Per Se - there is basically no place to sit down - and certainly no place to order a drink. It was kind of like getting to a department store 15 minutes early and milling around waiting for the doors to open. By the way - I am not sure the Michelin star US "upgrading" applies to the lower starred restaurants - at least in cities outside New York. For example - I've dined at 3 1 star restaurants in San Francisco fairly recently - Chez Panisse/Quince/La Folie (and they are every bit as good as 1 stars in Europe). Can't say the same about all NY 1 stars. But my experiences with some (Nobu/Cafe Boulud) aren't very recent (loved Nobu - Cafe Boulud didn't wow me) - and I know my negative opinions about another (Babbo) aren't shared by all. Maybe Michelin has started to grade more harshly as it tackles more restaurants in the US. I think we will perhaps have to wait for the Michelin Guide to Las Vegas to start doing some serious comparisons (because that's where a lot of the new big money restaurants are being opened these days in the US). Robyn