bandregg

I've eaten at ACME off and on again since they originally opened. I enjoy eating there but the off again comes from long streches of the menu not being changed. It is nice to see that they've settled down to producing good food again after being through a few chefs at the start. Seeing Varmint's complaint that he wasn't called when he lives so close made me think that it may be time to come up with a regular time (third Monday in the month or something) and start hitting all of our "I like to eat there, but never seem to make it," spots. We could certainly toss in some road trips to places like Hendrick's BBQ as well.

I have a Japanese brand (National, I think) rice cooker that I bought from Williams-Sonoma a few years ago. It's the fuzzy logic model that cost around 100$. I've always been very pleased with the results for all kinds of rice; I've never tried anything else. I want to be very clear about what I mean by the above statement; I prefer to cook my rice on the stove top, but for rice made in the rice maker, I've been very pleased. For me, it's prefect when I have other things going on and don't want to keep track of when the rice is finished, a real blessing for brown rice.

Jumping back to the Judeo-Christian line of reasoning for a moment, I vaguely recall a new testiment story about John refusing to eat something that had been considered unclean and the Lord getting pretty upset about it, because why should anything that God made be considered unclean. I have no idea what the verse is, and may in fact be talking out of my ass on this, it's been a long time since Sunday school. Sound familar to anyone?

I'll take a different tack and say something about my the downtown Durham restaurants that I can't get enough of, especially since I'm rarely downtown for lunch and that's when most are open. Best Sandwhich: Lomo con Plata at Latin Grill, marinaded hanger steak, limes, avacado, big cuban sandwhich bread, you can't go wrong. The rest of the sandwhiches are magic as well. Best Small Bite Deal: Safari Cuisine somosas, delicious, two for a dollar, meat or veggie, man, I could just eat these. Best Beer: Joe and Jo's, I know most of the beer comes by the bottle but you can't beat the local bar feel, the food while limited is good, and the staff make you feel welcome even if you aren't a regular. Best Healthy Bite: black bean chili from the 9th Street Bakery, buy some bread at the same time, you won't be disappointed.

Durham, NC - James Joyce, a tritely named Irish Pub with the quiant trait of being owned and operated by the Irish. Guiness, Boddies, Murphy's Stout and Amber on tap, Premiership football, formula-1, or hurling on the tele. I'm off for an afternoon pint with co-workers and a bunch of nursing students in an hour or so.

Here is a reprint of a NY Times article on English Food Critics and their over the top verbage. My preference is for a review which tells me something about what the reader is likely to experience at the restaurant, not how the well known reviewer wasn't kowtowed to enough. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archi...1/10/2003075370

The Lee Brothers' Boiled Peanut catalogue (http://www.boiledpeanuts.com/) is THE source for southern favorites for ex-pats. You can find cheerwine in the soda section.

When I read the subject all I could think was "Beef Vindaloo."

There are a couple of things about this article that stand out for me. The first and simplest is that the definition of fine-dining is a meal for two including drinks for around the 100$ price point. I don't know why this stands out for me, but from my experience, in regions with similar economies 100$ for two is the very bottom of the fine dining experience. The article doesn't discuss how many new non-chain restaurants were openned in the area during the last year and what their survival rate was. I'd guess some of that business is being lost to other local restaurants. And finally, I just love the last quote, "If you do enough volume, the costs don't matter." It reminds me of failed Internet startups.

I haven't formed my opinion on the main question yet, but I thought I'd relay a story that relates. For my twenty-first birthday my parent took me (at my request) to a very fine dinner at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence. When asked if we would be having drinks before dinner I ordered a tanqueray dry maritini, up, olives, and indicated I'd be having wine with dinner. My mother ordered a glass of "zinfandel," and my father followed suit. The drinks are served and my mother immediately stops the waiter and says, "This isn't zinfandel." Everyone kind of stopped in a moment of confusion and then the waiter and my mother exchanged a series of "Yes it is." "No it's not." She hadn't taken a sip yet. After a few back and forths, the answer to the confusion slowly dawned on me. When my mother says "Zinfandel" she means "White Zinfandel." After I explained what had happened, and cajoled my mother into trying her wine everyone had a brief (very brief for the waiter) laugh. My mother said that she enjoyed the wine, but when asked if she wanted another glass with her meal she opted for the white zin. this time. My father drank his real zin and stayed with it through the meal, though he hasn't ever had it in the nine years since. So, I guess what I'd say is that some people aren't wine people because they won't allow themselves to learn wines they enjoy (that's certainly my parents) so they stick with what they know then they think they're expected to drink wine. Either you carry wine they'll drink or you don't sell them wine.

Meat. For whatever reason, I'm really good at cooking meat and none of our friend seem to be. It really doesn't matter what kind of meat either. That said, if I ask, people always say that want my ribs. I've been tempted to just start having rib day once a month to meet the demand.

My mother onced mistook cinnamon for chili powder while making sloppy joes. Once the spice hit the pan and the smell hit the air she realized her mistake. Then she tried to wash off the ground beef and add in the chili powder if nothing was awry. The cinnamon smell in the air made if impossible for me to pretend that they tasted anything by atrocious.

My understanding is that French wine sales are still down, but that it's on the retail side of things and at this point more likely caused by the low dollar valuation and economy. Even when people were calling for boycotts Restaurants in North Carolina that carried French wines said they would continue to carry them and saw no drop in sales. One Somalier was even quoted as saying, "Well, the people who want to boycott French wine, and call them freedom fries ... they didn't eat here anyway."

Check out the following link for a few Ashville recommendations: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group%3A...G=Google+Search

This isn't exactly what you asked for, but tamales are so easy to make, you can just do it yourself. Better yet, do it they way my wife's family does and have a tamale making party where everyone get's plenty to eat and to take home and freeze. Masa and corn husks should be fairly easy to find, and as for the fillings let your mind go wild.

What about the ever simple and delightful dishes like bagna cauda. We were served some on linguini over the holidays that was just terrific.

I had one of the best steaks of my life at La Rez in Chapel Hill. They serve French cuisuine for the most part and had at least one fish dish on the menu.

I meant to include a review of the cheese counter. Here it is. The cheese counter looks pretty much like it has in the recent past. Two cool cases of good quality sometimes hard to find cheese. It was much less disappointing than the meat counter. That said, I don't know that they had anything I couldn't get at Whole Foods.

I spent some pre-holiday time at the newly reopened Fowlers today; these are my impressions. Wine The wine department is almost fully returned to its former glory. The Champagne wall was been moved to a more prominent location and there are now a slew of choices in French Chapagne around the 30$ price point. There is also a fair amount of vintage Champagne around the 55$ price point. Notably absent form the sparkly section of the past was the Krug, not that I could ever afford it, but it was always there. The floor selections were, as before, good bottles at better prices, with plenty of cases ready to be snatched up for a quick fete. There were also a number of individual bottles for sale at 25% on a center table. Some of these appeared to have damaged labels, and others looked like they just needed to be moved. No really great deals, I'm afraid. The rest of the section was a little slimmer than before the close and at the height of that departments glory, but the world was well represented with choices ranging from white spanish wines to red south africans. All in all a very plesant place to pick up a case (15% discount). There aren't prices on everything just yet, but hopefully that will change soon. Beer The beer coolers were nearly stocked full with your favorite hard to find labels. Fortunately for us, but not for Fowlers, more and more of these can be found at Whole Foods or even the Teeter for a little less. Specialty foods The specialty food section was, as always, a wonderful and chaotic place to shop: a few dozen hot sauces here, a six pack of stuffed olives there, and plenty of dried pasta. There weren't any glaring omissions, though again, not everything had a price on it yet, and the shelves were more bare than last year at this time. The candy department still had a wonderful array of chocolate and I'm enjoying a piece of the new sharffenberger milk bar right now (finally, milk chocolate worth eating!). Prepared Foods There was a fair line of people ordering and eating lunch when I was there. I was planning on eating some home-made bbq so I didn't check this out too much. The smells coming from the kitchen indicate that the cooks know what they're doing. I'll be grabbing a bite sometime in the future. OK, so far everything is great, a little trimmer than before, but that's too be expected. So onto the bad news. Produce I'm not sure why Fowlers even has a produce bin. Even when the market was in full swing in the past they've only had the random assortment of fresh veg and pretty much never enough to proclude me from having to shop somewhere else anyway. I guess some people are happy paying extra for a squash, not my thing. The produce bin was just as before. Kitchenwares There are no kitchenwares to be found outside of some foil cups with the baking supplied. I know this is a touch area, the new owners have been quoted as saying that Fowlers NEVER made money on kitchenwares, but that they were expected to carry them anyway. I hope that they figure this out. I think the previous owners had it wrong. I'll go to Fowlers to buy a measuring cup, or other cooking implements. I'm not going to go there to buy Asian themed plateware. I hope they work it out. Meat I never shopped at Fowlers during the glory days of their meat counter. When I started to drop by the meat guys always had a few good looking pieces of something, but no variety and high prices. I used to think the stories I heard about the meat counter indicated I didn't know a secret password or how to find the walk in. The meat counter is one, short refrigerated cooler, just like before they closed. They had some homemade looking sausage, and some Filet's for 23$/# as well as a few porkchops (4.99$/#) and that was about it. I'm holding onto my hopes that I'll get to see the past I missed reborn. And that's that.

I wonder if 2:30 is too early to toast to their success. Maybe, I'll wait just a little longer.

The Durham Herald-Sun food coverage is pretty bad. On Wednesdays we get a section of the paper with AP articles, a local restaurant buzz column (which includes meat deals from the local chain grocers (?); I read that section because it also has the comics. On Friday's we get a restaurant review which ranges from aweful to just OK. Either the restuarant reviewed has been around forever and has seen plenty of reviews or the reviewer writes things like "the food was excellent" and the dogs everything they ate. I read the NY and LA Times on-line to suplant what I live with.

I remember reading that a bottle of Petrus 2000 was found to be corked during a tasting earlier this year of 200 Bordeaux. I can't imagine 6000$ and a corked bottle.

Fowler's Grocery is indeed open. They re-openned just prior to Thanksgiving. I haven't had a chance to stop by and check it out, but a peek in while driving by looks like they're well stocked in the wine and housewares department.