Holly Moore

My experience with soft shell lobsters is that the meat is often mushy/watery.

Greg, if you care to comment, how has Laban's review impacted Django? Not sales, which is none of our business, but customer reaction in the dining room, staff morale, impact on business decisions, that sort of stuff.

Georges Perrier fearing the Starr Restaurant Organization is akin to Lucianno Pavarotti feeling threatened by John Travolta after Travolta's singing debut in Grease. Doesn't mean it's not a valid fear though considering what's happening hereabouts.

Georges Perrier announces that every few years.

That sounds like an excellent sandwich, but not what I've ever gotten. I think I'd prefer the version you describe, and I won't hazard a guess about what's "authentic", but every version I've been served, either in little diner-ish restaurants, bars, or at parties, has had the already-sliced beef floating in a pool of hot brothy jus, therefore not blood-rare, at least not for long... Certainly at parties, that was just part of the practicality of holding it on a buffet line, but even at restaurants, it's been the same. That said, I'm sure I've never had one at the actual point of origin, presumably at some bar in Buffalo. Anyone have an opinion about where one can get the "ideal" version of a beef on wick/weck? And would the beef be rare? ← I think you'd have a hard time finding beef on a wick in Ithaca anymore - I'm not aware of it being offered anywhere. Or a garbage plate for that matter. ← I believe the sandwich I recall came from the Boxcar in Cayuga Heights where I spent far to many weekday nights. Hotelies are contribution enough. But I do love the above mentioned Cornell BBQ chicken. Not all that wild abut Moosewood though. Of course it's true. Maybe no basis of fact, but it's true.

That would be Philippe's back in 1918 according to their website. Is the roll for a Beef on a Weck also dipped in the drippings of the roast? ← My experience is based on bars in the Ithaca area circa late '60's. There it was blood rare roast beef sliced very thin and heaped on a sandwich, maybe with a little but not a lot of au juice. Think Arbys with real roast beef, a roll of substance and real horseradish. And beer.

Indeed! Warm, thin sliced beef, warmed in jus, topped with a bit of horseradish, on a fresh kimmelwick roll (a kaiser-ish roll with caraway seeds and coarse salt on top, for the uninitiated), deserves to be WAY more famous than it is. But it's pretty rare even in Rochester, definitely more of a Buffalo/Grand Island/Niagara Falls thing. (although you can get the rolls in Wegmans.) I'm fairly sure that in and around Buffalo, one is required by law to serve beef on wick at all events that more than 6 people attend. Yes, that includes weddings. ← Standard fare during my college years in Ithaca. The beef couldn't be rare enough. Enough horseradish to make it a rite of passage. And beer. Lots of beer. Utica club as I recall.

The purpose of bells is to save people the arduous task of reading a review. Let the critic write his/her review and let the reader use the entire review to help influence a dining decision. It is interesting that while the NY Times relates no symbols to its movie reviews, it does permit the restaurant reviewer to assign stars. Why bells by the way? I get it - it is Philadelphia's Liberty Bell. But stars traditionally communicate grading. Some reviewers use toques, whisks, even grease stains - food related icons. What does the bell symbolize - a ringingly good meal?

So gut it is with applesauce.

It is sad if Laban or any food critic has such power over a restuarant's success or demise. I'm hoping that is not the case. My experience from my restaurant days is that the doting lemmings who follow a critic's whims - either to blindly savor or arrogantly pick apart the review - are not representative of the reviewed restaurant's market or customer base - unless the restaurant is Olive Garden. Even though Elaine Tait gave us a great review, the customers who packed our dining room the next two or three weeks were easily distinguishable from our typical customers (though our customers were anything but typical) and as soon as Elaine wrote about another restaurant they mostly vanished, never to be seen again. We didn't miss them. I would prefer to think that the sort of customer who would appreciate Django or any of the BYO's has enough savvy and curiosity to dine at Django and decide for themselves. I also suggest that Laban's three and four bell restaurants would be just as successful if there had been no Inquirer review. Excellence shines on its own. For the most part Laban's three and four bell declarations have merely confirmed what knowledgable Philadelphia diners already knew.

Greetings Big Hoss, So whom do you recommend in Henderson? Or please name a few and let us pick for ourselves. Thanks.

Ground beef, especially that ground off premises has more risk of contamination than beef muscle sliced on premises. It's a dumb rule but there is logic for it.

I agree. It is tragic that so much flavor ends up in the dishwater. A few thoughts - Many restaurants make a point of saying, "Go ahead, use your fingers," overruling the social doctrine that one must not use their hands when eating fried chicken. Perhaps Shola could do the same with licking the plate. Bread adds flavor and bulk; plate licking does neither. The ideal solution. Another idea would be for Shola to conjure up a tasteless, absorbant, edible sponge that could be used to sop up juices and gravy. Or, as a last resort, if there must be bread, adapt Chef Marc Veyrat's approach of pairing flavored breads with courses.

What promo key chain. I didn't get no friggin' promo key chain!

Wow, Holly, these burgers must be good, $145 for one burger?? Just kidding, the website forgot the decimal points. Gotta tell you, from the pictures, they don't look good enough to rate 5 grease stains. That is high praise indeed but tell me what makes them so special? ← You should see my pics of White Manna burgers then. Beauty is in the eye of the eater. I show the burgers as they come off the grill to the customer. Restaurant verite. Why better. Toasted buns, hand formed patties in the area of 1/4 lb, a glisten of grease on the bun crown, slightly squashed from the grill iron. Classic and the way a hamburger was meant to be served. So many of the designer burger places don't even make the effort to toast the buns. But the only way to understand and appreciate what a burger should be is to do as Charlie Mummer says and head to Charlie's. The bars and restaurants do eight ounce burgers not because it is a better burger but because they can't charge $7.95 for a proper quarter pound burger. The mache, the goat cheese, the fois gras and all the other frills - build the perceived value and the size of the check. Same reason those places don't offer cups of soup anymore.

A lot has to do with the burger size. I am not a fan of the humongous burgers which I consider to be anything larger than a third of a pound. As much as I like to wear some of my meal, the giant burgers rarely stay with the bun and the ingredients slip out all over the place. Restaurants keep building burgers bigger and bigger to justify a higher menu price. My favorite Philadelphia area burger is from a place called Charlies in Folsom, in the airport area. This is the classic American hamburger as it should be served.

Somehow that doesn't sound anywhere near as good as a broiled rib-eye, starting to char on the outside and oozing medium rare juices.

Congrats on the review. So what is the vacuum thing Amada does with the steak that Laban didn't care for?

It is impossible not to rave about the food. It was extraordinary. And tasty. Company wasn't all that bad either. What makes Studio Kitchen so special is the opportunity both to watch Shola plate each course, bent over the table, precisely setting each component in place and to chat with Shola before and after courses about the ingredients, the cooking techniques, and the state of cooking throughout the world. In any other restaurant I know of, it would be impossible, even at a chef's table, to be so involved and at one with the dining experience. Now lets talk about cauliflower and raspberry. What rational mind would even consider pairing the two? Lunacy. Genius.

I'd second or third Las Mananitas, though my experience dates back about 8 years. As a bonus, if you stay at the hotel, you are able to have breakfast on the terrace/dining room amid the gardens and the strolling peacock. Their breakfasts are as good as their dinners.

Though about more than food, whenever I think of food in a movie, top of mind has to be Tom Jones.

Nothing can ever touch the overuse of the word "beautiful" by every single person on the food network. You jest. But it is not all that easy coming up with 1000 different ways to say tasty.

Rave reviews for a small restaurant at any level of cuisine are, almost always, great for the long term and disasterous in the short term. My experience with reviews is that most impact a restaurant for 2-3 weeks and then sales drop back to not that much higher than they were before the review. Then they start to build again on a gentler curve. Most people upon seeing that you're knocking yourselves out trying to give good service understand the situation and will be back. Those that don't, ... They're probably better off at McDonald's anyway.

My first job in a restaurant too - actually in a 24 hour diner. And guess what, it was and still is one of my favorite restaurant positions. I have always found comforting the knowledge that if life should ever throw me a hard ball and I lose it all, I will always be able to get a job that I like - running a dishwasher. There is something about the clatter, the steam, the chlorine smell and the instant gratification of makining scattered stacks of dirty dishes, glasses and silverware, orderly and glistening clean. Or maybe it's just that I miss the diner waitresses. That too, but running a dish machine was and would still be a great job.

With cold cuts 1/4 lb is a lot. I'm thinking two sandwiches per band member, each with 3 oz of cold cuts and a one oz slice of cheese. If you're talking roast beef or turkey, maybe 1/4 lb per sandwich. To be on the safe side figure every other person will have a third sandwich. Wild guess, but maybe 8 sandwiches per head of lettuce. The salads, I'd guess maybe a quarter pound, maybe a little more per person. If you do the soup one sandwich per person should be enough.