TheFoodTutor

Alright, this is the press release that I received. I'm not sure that it matches the Gordon Ramsay announcement, but the similarity seems striking, and hearing these 2 things within 24 hours seems quite coincidental. I mentioned on another website yesterday that my biggest hesitation with signing up would be that if the "world-renowned" chef turned out to be Emeril Lagasse, I would not be able to resist the temptation to turn around and walk out. The talent scout who called me apparantly got my phone number from my Food Tutor website. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Granada America Casting Monday, July 12, 2004 Granada America (I’m a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here & Celebrity Boot Camp) and A. Smith & Co. (Paradise Hotel, Forever Eden & The Swan) are excited to announce production of a new network reality series. A nationwide casting call will begin July 12th in search of a dozen aspiring chefs and would-be-restaurateurs who are looking for the culinary opportunity of a lifetime. Under the watchful eye of a world-renowned chef, the show will put the rookies through their paces regarding all aspects of fine dining and restaurant management to determine who’s got what it takes to open their own eatery. The producers are looking to cast charismatic, outgoing men and women over the age of 21 who have a fascination with food to star in the new series. Whether you’ve just graduated from a culinary academy, or simply love food and think you have what it takes to open your own restaurant, we want to meet you! Casting events will take place in the following cities: Atlanta New York Boston Minneapolis - St. Paul San Francisco (More cities to follow) <Additional casting information can be found by calling our casting hotline:800-333-6974.> Note: This number does not seem to work. Cities and dates are subject to change without notice. Please note additional eligibility requirements apply.

Oh, yeah. G.S. could never do a reality show. Well, I can cut and paste the press release if anyone's interested in seeing it.

I got a call from a talent scout about a new restaurant reality show. He's holding an open call here in Atlanta, and in several other cities, and he wanted to know if I knew anyone who was interested. He sent me a press release, and it doesn't say who the chef will be, but that it will be someone high-profile. Hmm.

I don't like the term "lie" in this situation. The one letter that stated that french fries were an item that vegetarians could enjoy at McDonald's was written by an employee of the company who most likely didn't know that they contained a tiny amount of a beef product, under the heading of "natural flavorings." It's not listed under their regular indredient lists, after all. The company, on the other hand, only made the claim that the french fries were fried in 100% vegetable oil, which is not a claim that I equate with saying something is vegetarian, since other chains claim that about the oil they fry their chicken in. I usually assume they're saying that for the health claims of the oil itself, as in saturated vs. unsaturated. I'm not sure why the deliberate adding of this substance makes a difference. I know that McDonald's add the beef product because the fries simply taste better with it in there, not so that they could trick vegetarians into eating them. I do think it's more important that the amount of the beef product in the fries is similar to the amount of beef or other animal fat that you'd find in just about every type of french fry in any restaurant.

Wow! The arguments on both sides are sounding increasingly harsh around here. I'm sorry I said anything, actually. Speaking as someone who practiced vegetarianism for some time, and as someone who has worked in restaurants of all types, I can say for sure that I've never worked in a restaurant where the french fries were guaranteed to be vegetarian, since most restaurants fry their french fries in fryers that are also used for meat. And of course, many brands of frozen french fries contain meat products as a flavoring agent. I thought it was so common that strict vegetarians would know that, since I certainly did when I was a vegetarian. And I would not recommend that an observant jew eat the ice cream at McDonald's, as I highly doubt that it's kosher. The one letter from a customer satisfaction representative was the only claim found, and it's also mentioned in the article in the other link. I agree with the general legal opinion that it wasn't enough of a smoking gun to suggest that it was McDonald's policy to claim their french fries were vegetarian, but rather that it was a mistake on the part of their employee. At any rate, it's fairly clear the company settled to avoid any further bad publicity. To any vegetarians out there who might end up being traumatized otherwise, let me go ahead and warn you now that you should not eat french fries in any restaurant, thinking that they will be 100% free of animal products. If you must eat in restaurants, and want to make sure that you get no animal products whatsoever in your food, I recommend that you eat at a vegetarian Indian place.

My impression of what the producer said about its product is that their french fries are fried in "100% vegetable oil" and I believe that statement is true, or at least that's what they fill their fryers with. The assumption that the fryers used for french fries would never be contaminated with meat products, or that the "natural flavors" contained in the french fries are vegetarian was done on the part of the consumer.

I read the article about the vegetarian lawsuit, and I'd have to say that I think the claim that McDonald's represented their fries as "vegetarian safe" is somewhat dubious, although some employees of McDonald's mistakenly represented them as such. It is a lucky thing for the vegetarian groups who received the money that McDonald's chose to settle, rather than suffer the bad publicity in court. When I was in high school, I had a number of friends who worked part time jobs at McDonald's. Since this chain routinely employs teens at very low wages, I can say with a certain degree of certainty that there are many "inconsistencies" in food preparation. For instance, every person I know who's worked at a McDonald's has flipped a burger onto the floor, accidentally, and not wanting to throw it out, flipped it right back up on the grill. I'm fairly certain there is someone reading this board right now who has eaten a McDonald's burger that was on the floor at some point during preparation. Knowing this, I assume that a restaurant that can't even keep burgers off the floor probably also cannot assure that their fryers remain vegetarian. Kids do unpredictable things all the time, and I'm sure there have been many incidents of frying a chicken sandwich in the french fry fryer, or even dropping a burger in there, which would contaminate the oil with the equivalent amount of animal product to the amount of "natural flavoring" added to the fries. I just can't imagine a strict vegetarian walking into a McDonald's in this country and thinking they can pay $1 for a super-size fry with an assurance that the product is animal product free.

Well, the first breakfast I ever ate in the South was at a Waffle House, which is a Southern thing, while at the same time it is not, as they do not have biscuits. I was a child travelling with my parents, and my sister happened to receive cold eggs on this occasion. She told the waitress that her eggs were cold, and the waitress looked at her quizzically, so she repeated the statement a couple of times. After a few more moments of confusion, the waitress' eyes lit up, and she said, "Oh, they're CAWLD!" That was the first moment that I realized that a few differences in pronunciation could amount to the definition of a separate dialect among the American English language. My memorable first Southern breakfast, however, was at a convention in a retreat near Talladega, Alabama. The place is called Lake Hypatia, and run by a very sweet couple. Because it's quite remote, or at least it was when the conventions began, there is not much good food to be had at local restaurants. Later on, I ended up catering a meal for a future convention, and the best I could come up with for dinner for 100 people on a limited budget was bucketloads of sloppy joes, with a TVP option for vegetarians, huge trays of baked beans, vegetables and dip, plus some potato chips. It must have not been horrible, since every bit was scraped up within a half hour. So the meals during the retreat are somewhat slim pickin's, and there are tons of activities inbetween, so you're starving by the time you get whatever is available to eat. The last day of the event is a Sunday morning, when you get a big Southern breakfast for the final meal, and then you head home. My first time there, after a weekend that included being seated for nearly 2 and a half hours at a local restaurant with nothing to eat but a few, tiny raw peanuts from a friend while we were waiting to be served, I got this huge gift of a meal. Big biscuits, eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, white gravy. I was like an escaped prisoner from a concentration camp who was finally allowed to eat. And every bite was lovingly prepared by a couple of nice Southern ladies. I can't remember a meal that I've appreciated much more than this. And an hour later, they came back with trays of fresh, warm banana pudding. Another first for me. It is indelibly etched into my brain as an ethereal comfort food.

Yes, now that I think about it, that is the best bet. It's just that I never think of Watershed as being easily accessable, since it's actually hard to get to from where I live. To take transit, I'd have to take the train South from Buckhead to Five Points, switch trains and get out in Decatur. And in a car, it can be not so easy, either. I was once offered a job in Watershed's kitchen and part of the reason I turned it down was because it had taken more than a 45 minute drive to get there for the interview, and it wasn't even at a particularly troublesome time of day.

Dammit! I was thinking of a way to use niggardly in a sentence in this thread, like by calling Fat Guy downright "niggardly" in his allowance of the term "politically correct," and then someone beat me to the punch. Oh, and GG, I don't have to wait to go to the movies to be offended. There's a product at the grocery store called "Juicy Jews" and it comes in little boxes so that children can tote them around schoolyards, sipping on them. Hitler would have been proud. Oy.

Pardon me for asking, and I know someone will probably get angry with me, but if it's important to your religious beliefs that you practice strict vegetarianism, why would you eat at McDonald's?

How about Oscar's? That's closer to the airport, so you could skip a lot of the traffic part. I have not been, but I've heard it's very good.

In our family it was called "American Chop Suey" and made with Campbell's tomato soup. Didn't we talk about a lot of this on the thread about stuff we like that most people think sucks? My mom made a simple version of this dish, too, with just canned, whole tomatoes that she mushed with her fingers, macaroni and ground beef. Only she called it "Macaroni Creole." She also mixed leftover corn with mashed potatoes and fried little potato pancakes out of them. Yum. And there was "Beef Stroganoff" which was really just a type of Shepherd's Pie with ground beef, cream of mushroom soup and a topping of leftover mashed potatoes and flour, turned crusty in the oven. I liked it, but picked the mushrooms out. I still won't eat canned mushrooms. Here's a very guilty one, and I'm wondering if anyone ever had a mother as wonderful as mine, to make oatmeal in this way. She made the oatmeal nice and thick, then spread it in a 1-inch layer over a plate. Then, she poured melted butter over the top, and topped that with cinnamon sugar, so that each bite was sweet and salty with butter dripping all over it. I honestly didn't know that I really didn't like oatmeal until I tried it at someone else's house, and they just gave me plain old crappy oatmeal and a spoon. I thought everyone had been eating it that way. I also like: Scrambled egg sandwiches with mayonnaise. Ramen noodles toasted in an oiled frying pan, crumbled for a salad topping. Burnt cheese, or really just any cheese, and lots of it. Ranch dressing with guacamole mixed in it as a dip. And oh, this last one is pretty low class: I like hors d'oeuvres made by stuffing any old thing into canned crescent roll dough, then folding it so you look like you made your own pastry. Trashy, but if you have good friends, they'll not only pretend not to notice your secret (ignoring the Pillsbury wrappers on the counter), but they'll also admit they're pretty tasty.

I'm a Northern transplant, but I must say I do appreciate some aspects of a Southern breakfast, especially when hung-over. I'm not too fond of grits, though. Sometimes entire months go by when I do not consume a single grit. When I do have them, I'm torn between sweet and savory, as they can be pretty good if you sugar them as you would Cream of Wheat. I am wondering if anyone else finds it difficult to use cast iron in a tight kitchen area, as I do. It's particularly difficult if you live in a small apartment with a smoke detector, if you catch my drift. Nothing ruins breakfast like having to run and open all the windows, rapidly fanning the morning paper under the smoke alarm to get it to stop whining. Other than the smoke, though, cast iron is a great tool.

Since I've managed restaurants that had palmetto bugs present on occasion, and even infestations of the small, german cockroaches - in the office area only, eating the paperwork - I'd have to say that I'd continue to eat in a restaurant where I saw a cockroach on the floor or the wall. Probably not served in my food, though, unless it was really, really good food that I could not find elsewhere. I have stopped going to restaurants after being served obviously slimy celery and foul-smelling sauces - both of which should have been noticed by the food handler who served them. I also never went back to a Vietnamese place where my long spoon, stuck in my ca phe sua da, was coated with something green when I pulled it out of the glass. I can understand a mistake like this possibly happening, but when I showed it to my server, he just repeated the word "dirty" and ran away. I kind of was hoping he'd replace the drink, but he didn't, and he never even came back to the table.

I grew up in the midwest, and I've had both Krystal and White Castle. I don't think either one is better, and neither one is even notable. Mostly, I've had the impression that places like that stay open because they are 24 hour establishments, and there is no shortage of marijuana smokers in any region of the country. There was a short-lived regional chain that I preferred to Krystal and White Castle. It was called Top Hat, and I remember liking their small, square fried chicken sandwich and onion petals. That was back when I was struggling through college and any meal that didn't consist of ramen noodles was a big treat, so I'd guess that if they were still around, I wouldn't appreciate them as much today as I did then.

OK, I just want to add to my previous post by saying that, while apartment space in Buckhead is comparable with practically every area in the 10 county region that we call Atlanta, it's not reasonable by the definition of a lot of places in the country. And it's closer to public transportation than much of the rest of the region, but that's not a great option, either. And I can walk to several nice restaurants for dining or work, but I still find a need for a car. Real estate is probably not a bargain here, either. And I'd certainly think twice about opening an avant-garde restaurant in this neighborhood, but I'd really hesitate to do that in any neighborhood in Atlanta right now. It's a hard market. If I were to open a restaurant right now, I'd do something modest and wait for better times to do something really daring, in any neighborhood. We still have plenty of traffic in Buckhead at this point, though. While it sounds funny to say, "Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded" that seems to be what everyone is saying, except for the people who are making money here.

I'm very conflicted about this topic on all kinds of fronts. First, by "Pano Jr." I assume you mean Pano I., versus I. Pano, Karatassos. I know them both, so it's not politically correct to refer to one as Jr., although I'm guilty of doing so to clarify of whom I'm speaking. If there were ever anyone in a perfect position where he needn't move anywhere to have a good life and feed his family with job security, it's Pano I. He has his own restaurant, built specifically for him, and he doesn't need to work that hard to have the prestige of having "the only fine dining Greek restaurant around." It's not that busy, but the people that go love it, and he doesn't need to worry about money. He has another brand new baby, and nothing to prove, so I'm having a hard time believing this rumor. I think I'll call him this week and just ask him to find out. Yes, there is much better dining in Midtown than in Buckhead, in some ways, but there's still plenty of hit-or-miss there. I ate at Spice a couple weeks ago, and it was clearly mediocre, with a high price tag. I could have eaten at Nava and had an experience that was just as good. Another variable is that the definition of "Midtown" is not clear. Exactly where on Peachtree Street do you leave Buckhead and enter Midtown? Is Restaurant Eugene in Midtown? Is Bazzaar? There's a whole region that could be considered "South Buckhead" that holds some decent dining, too. The trend I do think is prevalent is that people are moving away from hugely expensive meals and looking for a little value in their dining dollar. Fine dining places all over the city are going hungry while some of the places that provide good food at reasonable prices are packed to the gills. Personal debt is still at record levels, and bankruptcy is rampant. People who've had one SUV repossessed are taking the one remaining family vehicle to places with somewhat lower prices, but still good food. Oh, and I live in one of those apartments in Buckhead. They are surprisingly reasonable in price and there are certainly lots of people living here who eke out a modest living working in the restaurants in my neighborhood.

For those of you still interested, I went to Blais' new place again last night. Here's another post from the same site. linehog is my boyfriend, and we both work at restaurants in Atlanta.

Jinhuchun tea house in Atlanta also serves shaved ice desserts, and I was wondering if they were more of the patbingsu variety. I will probably go tomorrow to see if they have dduk, but I know they use a lot of sweet red beans, grass jelly, coconut, condensed milk and some other fruits. I have not seen the whole thing topped with whipped cream and a cherry, as pictured above though. They also serve bubble tea and tea eggs there.

Proper spelling would have prevented one of the problems I have with Chick Filet. I once had an employee who was slightly ditzy, and she was talking to me about her husband and some other person who was a manager at Chik-A-Flick. And she kept going on and on, and all I could think about was, "What's Chik-A-Flick?" She said it over and over, and it took me the longest time to figure out what she was talking about. Now, every time I hear the name Chik-fil-A, all I can think of is Chik-A-Flick. I think that if corporate executives were to see the effect these names have on less-intellectually-gifted individuals, who already have enough trouble spelling and using English correctly, they might rethink the cutesy ideas. And when I say Krispy Kreme doughnuts are pretty good, I really mean that any yeast-raised, deep-fried doughnut is good, for those once a year events when I eat a doughnut.

I went to opening night. This is a copy of my post on AtlantaCuisine.com about my experience. I didn't attend the opening party upstairs though, as I wasn't invited.

No, I do not molest children in my kitchen. Oh, wait, that's a different word. Never mind.

I will weigh in as one of those not fond of Chik-fil-A, for the record. I think that their sandwiches are just OK, and while it is a chicken breast, not a patty, they charge accordingly more for it. McDonald's charges a mere $1 for their minced, pieces-parts sandwich while Chik-fil-A charges $3 and change. And there really is something to be said for correct spelling, even if you're being cute in a marketing slogan. You have no idea how much it bothers me to write the name Krispy Kreme, even though they have good doughnuts, because they not only use that ugly word, but they misspell it. So, now that I've convinced everyone of my anal-retentiveness, I'd like to ask if anyone knows whether there is truth to the urban legend that Chik-fil-A marinates their chicken breasts in pickle juice? I heard this again the other night when I was asking folks if they liked Chik-fil-A or not. It's similar to the legend that McDonald's coats their french fries in a sugar solution to make them fry up more crisply. That's crisply, not crispy, or crispily.

Some people order "half and half" and they mean they want half sweet tea and half unsweet. I always just assume that they want a big glass of coffee creamer, though.