Holly Moore

Amen. Where were you John when gastropubs started mucking up hamburgers.

I'm cutting across Canada (assuming I remember to pack my passport) between Detroit and Buffalo. Looking for HollyEats.com sorts of places along the way. Side trips up to 50 miles (or more) easily considered. Thanks

Martini Cart - prepared tableside Lump Crab Cocktail Kidney Lamb Chop Mixed Grill Twice Baked Potato Hash Browns Cheese Cake

Me, I'd go to the Jack Frost Luncheonette.

I bought a couple of the Sheboygan tomatoes - used one today for a basic lettuce, mayo and tomato sandwich. Nice and ripe. Very good flavor. Rising Star peaches from Three Springs rocked too.

My sense in the camera folk and the rest of the production staff rat out contestants to the judges. Whereas the cauliflower on top that didn't hit the ground would have been fine to use (or all could be rinsed off if uncooked), word would have gotten to the judges, one of whom would have asked something like, "any problems with prep once you got to the farm?" Later at Judges Table, a big black mark for using cauliflower that fell of the table.

AdSum opened yesterday at 5th and Bainbridge. Chef owner and ex-Lacroix chef is Matt Levin, He's moving on downtown with an uptown bistro menu. I hit AdSum today for a late lunch - Started off with fois gras poutine (shouldn't eGullet have a spell check that recognizes fois, gras and poutine). Excellent, but I'm not sure how much the fois gras added beyond aesthetics. Curious if pate fois gras might blend in better. Fresh mozzarella for the cheese. A little stringy which is not how I remember poutine - but it's been quite a while. Also, in a gesture towards healthy eating, I tried bib salad with pears, Maytag blue cheese and candied cashews. Could have used more pear, but great taste combination. Lots of other exciting dishes on the menu. Great feel, overall. Excellent hangout potential.

Rick Sebak's Breakfast Special exploring breakfast around the US airs today at 8 PM eastern on PBS. Rick did the Hot Dog Show and Sandwiches That You Will Like - he has a great touch for seeking out and presenting small restaurants doing what they do, really well. Edited to add - different times for different PBS channels. In Philadelphia, Channel 39 today, channel 12 - Sunday at 4 PM.

Checked DirecTV search - not yet but I hope they replay Cleveland featuring Bourdain v. Harvey Pekar soon.

Yeah, between Top Chef and various Food Network shows the time factor and fake suspense gets tedious. I'm waiting for Top Doc - "You have thirty minutes to resect that bowel... Time. Hands up everyone."

Blueberries on top are nice though they roll all over the place and expertly parry off fork thrusts. They also taste differently fresh than when cooked into a pancake. Blueberry pancakes are pancakes with the blueberries cooked inside.

Maybe not the best, but whole belly, historical and on the bay in Narragansett - Aunt Carrie's 1240 Ocean Road. If you don't mind a bit of a drive past the CT state line - head to Johnny Ads on Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook CT. I rate these as some of the best in New England. For a mystical fresh baked bread experience, seek out Daddy's Bread in Wakefield. Well off the beaten path, no sales staff. Everything is on the honor system.

It is impossible to have too many blueberries in a blueberry pancake.

Yes, in a way it's more impressive for a pitmaster to turn out good chicken than a good pork shoulder. You need to have some skills to barbecue chicken; you have to be pretty ingenious at messing things up to ruin a pork shoulder. Yes re chicken. My guess is that it doesn't have enough fat content to hold - that to be juicy it has to be served pretty much right out of the pit. Alas, there are plenty of barbecue cooks capable of drying out or rushing a pork shoulder - though I agree the odds for good pulled pork are far better than for chicken. Katie - the only chicken method I trust less than pit barbecue is supermarket rotisserie.

I've also had bad luck with barbecued (smoked) chicken. I so rarely have gotten decent chicken at BBQ places that I've mostly stopped ordering it. What's the point if I can get what I know a place does well - briskets, sausage, pulled pork, ribs, etc. I'm not totally in agreement with the initial definition of barbecued. Blame it on Cornell - the recipe for Cornell barbecued chicken (grilled with lots of basting) that was developed by a professor in the School of Agriculture is consistently the best "barbecued" chicken I have ever tasted.

You're going to hate this idea. The only way I can see it working is if you license your recipes and design to a bakery/factory that has experience adapting products for freezing, packaging and shipping. Or cut a deal with Dunkin Donuts to bake and deliver them locally. A big contract should get someone's attention. Another option might be to build your own network of craft bakers to bake and deliver them locally. Or simply supply the restaurants in your area. Maybe, you could define your area as wherever UPS delivers by ground in a day.

Hell yes, you eat in your car. Car hops are universally cool, especially at institutions like the Varsity in Atlanta. Plus you can listen to your music and nibble on your droppings on the way home. More to the point, it is part of Americana that needs to be sustained. Thanks to Sonic and a few others, drive-ins never went totally away. Bowling has been back for a while. Next, maybe, drive-in movies. Now that's a Saturday night!

I'd get the coney with warm meaty chili. And wash it down with something blue - their Ocean water. I pretty much order by Sonic's vast color palette.

Seems like in the urban areas hardly anyone bakes pies anymore. I wonder how many of the Top Chef Masters participants have pie on their dessert menu? Restaurant desserts have moved on up to the Eastside - pastry chefs are so beyond baking a simple pie. There a so many times at the end of a meal that I would trade the composite desserts of today for a slice of fresh fruit pie, still warm from the oven and maybe topped with some home-churned vanilla ice cream or mit a mountain of schlag.

From the article in yesterdays NY Times: There's a big difference between "refused to state" and "did not respond". Often times, the latter simply means that the writer did not get a response in time to file the story. It does not mean that Time is actively refusing to disclose the information. I may have erred semantically, but... Ask any NY Times writer or editorial type the Times policy on freebies and they would know or could immediately ask someone who knows. I expect that is the case with Time Inc. - especially since the question was asked to the same person who supplied Time's official comment concerning the web column.

I am not sure what precisely Time refused to state. It DID issue a statement that the circumstances of Ozersky's wedding should have been disclosed. Time doesn't publish restaurant reviews, but I have to imagine it has SOME kind of policies around writers accepting freebies from sources whom they purport to cover objectively. From the article in yesterdays NY Times:

A few random thoughts - It is curious that a major media organization as Time Inc. refused to state its ethical polices regarding comps. One problem I have with the wedding comp is the scale - thousands and possibly tens of thousands of dollars, depending on attendance and retail value. Yet a comp is a comp, no matter its value. If the NY Times is the tail now wagging the dog, can professional ethics become dated? Attorneys can now advertise. Physicians can filter their advice based on agreements with health insurers. Investment bankers can put their interests ahead of their clients. Yet I am sure that within each of these professions there are those who still consider such practices as unethical. Has the proliferation of bloggers, Yelpers and such diluted the professionalism of the food journalist to the point that ethics no longer constrain behavior? Twenty years ago a city might have had no more than five or ten food writers with significant audiences. Now that same city may have twenty, fifty or more. In the early 80s, when I had my restaurant, writers who requested comps were scorned but welcomed. We didn't respect them as journalists but we valued the free editorial ink. It was an unspoken and sometimes spoken agreement that reviews resulting from a comp would be glowingly favorable. Do restaurateurs and chefs today have the same attitude today towards writers requesting that their meal be comped? If it is unethical for a food writer to accept a comp is it similarly unethical for a restaurant to tempt a writer with a comp? If a restaurant refuses to comp a writer, is that a valid reason for a writer to not write about that restaurant?

So even if he didn't write anything at all about his experience, he shouldn't have accepted the gifts from the chefs? I'm not sure I would have had the same reaction if Mr. Ozersky were simply an author and not also writing a column, albeit on-line, for Time. I believe the chefs did not expect a quid pro quo and I believe nothing was offered to them by Mr Ozersky. But accepting the free food and free venue ranges somewhere between unethical and questionable ethics. Writing about it in his Time on-line column made it worse. It damages not only his credibility but the credibility of all food journalists.

The issue is not whether Mr. Ozersky should have mentioned in his column that the food was free. The issue is whether he should have accepted the free food and venue in the first place. He should not have. Also from today's NY Times piece on Ozersky's wedding: I hope these requests are from professional freeloaders and not professed journalists, assuming a line can be drawn. Brings to mind the musical "Oliver" and the critical point of view expressed by the beggars in a verse from "Food, Glorious Food" Claiming one could not afford to write about a place unless the meal is comped is totally lame. Such impoverished writers unable to expense their meals can always review Gray's Papaya if they can't afford Per Se. Edited to ponder whether Mr. Ozersky will have to declare the "$200 to $800 per person" value of the meal as income? Wondering the same about food writers who gobble down comps.

Out of curiosity, have any of the destination BBQ joints outside of Austin opened an Austin branch?