jordyn

Hey, March is very good, but it ain't cheap. I always surprise myself with how much I managed to spend there, even relying on wine pairings rather than buying expensive wine. I think Aaron's point was that the found the other places he listed to be a better value than March. This is a fair subjective assessment, although I personally would disagree with some of the places he prefers. Aaron: Can you comment on how successful you thought the wine pairings were with the food you ordered?

Bux: Sorry, your last post confused me a bit. Are you arguing that once the restaurant creates its consistent, the motivations of the diner do not matter? (If so, I'm inclined to agree; if not, what are you saying?)

That's glenn, right? Glenn? Glenn?

Rich: I'm just asking if there is a moral difference between a collector bringing in expensive bottles versus someone just trying to save themselves a (potentially considerable) amount of money. Fat Guy: Assuming you're addressing that question to me, I don't believe you're betraying your argument. I just think you added a second argument that has not been well supported thus far, and even if it's true, it seems like a reason that is much more likely to make serious wine drinkers unhappy.

Note that several of the dishes that have been previously mentioned as particularly good at Union Pacific were not available on the lunch menu, so despite ordering a la carte we did not have access to some options that might have been more appealing.

Okay, now you've shifted from a line of reasoning that I was perfectly comfortable with to one that is less compelling to me. Before you made the argument that "wine programs are expensive, which justifies high markups". Fine. Now, you suggest "wine programs are essential to the survival of the restaurant". The second statement may or may not be true (I have no idea), but it's a significant departure from the first and I can see why it would upset serious collectors. Bux makes a broader set of arguments which do a better job of justifying why restaurants ought to be able to disallow BYO altogether or charge whatever they want. I continue to be very comfortable with the idea that restaurants are entitled to charge whatever they want, and to offer whatever services they want. But I wonder if Bux is in the Fat Guy camp when it comes to taking advantage of restaurants that have made the conscious decision to allow BYO. Should Beachfan feel guilty that he's taking the restaurant up on its generous offer? Taking this one step farther, if I'm not a collector, and I take $1000 of wine to a restaurant to save another $1000 or $2000 in markup, should I feel more guilty than someone who just happened to have the same bottles lying in their cellar? [Edited for prettiness.]

Aha, Fat Guy's last post finally made a light bulb go off in my head. I'm willing to concede that a restaurant ought to be able to mark up wine in order to cover the cost of their wine program, plus a reasonable profit. So, if that's 300%, fine. But Steve P and Beachfan don't really need the restaurant's cellar, the sommelier, and the other trappings of the program. They just want someone to open their wine and pour it. They want to be able to opt out of the expensive program and get the bare bones one. They're even willing to pay a reasonble fee for this service. Fat Guy is probably correct in asserting that if enough people took the BYO route, the wine program as we know it would become untenable. If that were the case, the restaurant would have to consider that maybe such a service were not really demanded by their customers and would have to re-think their offering. None of this leads me to believe that BYOers are getting a free ride, however. They're just getting a ride in a different class of service, and that happens to suit them very well. [Edited to remove redundancy.]

Do you acknowledge a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law? I do, but I don't see how it's relevant. Do you mean to imply: 1) Restaurants don't want to offer corkage, but "the law" requires them to? 2) Restaurants don't want to offer corkage, but are somehow tricked into doing it? 3) Restuarants want to offer corkage, but only as a one-time event on your 30th anniversary? 4) Something else that demonstrates I'm missing your point even more completely?

As a general concept, I absolutely agree with you--accompinaments often make or break a dish. However, in the case of Fresh, the fish seemed to me, and Cuozzo seemed to agree, of excellent quality and suitably prepared. It was enjoyable without the garnish; in fact, more enjoyable without the garnish than with. Does this mean the dish wouldn't have been improved if differently presented? No. But, if you ignore the rice, you still have a lovely piece of fish. Indeed, in my notes on Fresh, I wrote: "Some fine-tuning of the menu would probably help to move the fish into the starring role." So, the criticism is not off base, but not as important in this case as it might be in some others.

Fat Guy: To the extent that restaurants are not obligated to allow BYO, but offer it anyway, why should one feel guilty about taking them up on their offer, even if only to save money? I think Beachfan's argument is unassailable: the restaurant offers the option, theoretically at a price that it is comfortable with. Perhaps it is appropriate to be grateful for this service, as Beachfan seems to be, but I can't imagine feeling like I'm somehow doing the restaurant a disservice by purchasing one of their offered products. Should I be similarly reluctant to take advantage of a $20.02 lunch at a fine restaurant in New York, knowing that if they sold all of their meals at similar prices, they might go out of business?

I think many of the critcisms are accurate, but considering that the restaurant opened about a month ago, a little unfair. I found our server to be reasonably knowledgeable about the menu, although in a fairly scripted sort of way. Still, she was able to answer all of the questions that we posed to her. I think we may have had the same server that Cuozzo describes having difficulty opening the bottle of wine--ours also struggled, briefly, with the cork. The format of the menu, and meat-based descriptions of some of the dishes is certainly unusual; I did not find this particularly troublesome, although the categorization was perhaps slightly cuter than it needed to be. Finally, regarding the food, I think that Cuozzo is correct that some of the accompaniments are a little off. Like him, I found the garlic rice to overpower the toro dish, for example. However, no one forces you to eat that stuff. I mostly just ignored it and enjoyed some excellent fish. Apparently the other factors described made it difficult for Cuozzo to do so; I suspect he would have had better luck if he waited a little longer for the restaurant to settle into its groove.

There's a more recent thread on Union Pacific, but it got a little...er...distracted, so I'm reviving this one. Matt Zito and I visited Union Paciifc for lunch today. We had originally hoped to try the $20.02 lunch menu; unfortunately, there was no vegetarian option for Matt and neither of the entree choices (salmon or turkey schnitzel sandwich) looked appealing to me, so we ordered a la carte. My first course was a warm corn soup. This dish was garnished with an appealing bit of technical wizardry--floating on the top of the soup was a drizzle of oil, and individual corn kernels were suspended within the oil. This gave the soup an unexpected and appealing appearance. Unfortunately, while the soup was acceptable, it did not produce the same level of excitement on the tongue as in the eye. Compared to the shot of corn soup I enjoyed on Sunday evening at Blue Hill, for example, the Union Pacific effort lacked in both depth of flavor as well as the intensity of the corn itself. Matt ordered the asparagus dish, which I did not sample. My second course was also an appetizer, as none of the entrees look as appealing to me as the tuna tartare with wasabi and cilantro. I felt like this dish would have been a good amuse. The wasabi was a notable element in the flavor of the dish, and the tuna seemed to be of acceptable quality. However, my palate tired of the dish quite quickly and I ended up not finishing. Because there were no vegetarian entrees on the menu, Matt accepted our server's offer of a pasta dish. This appeared to be orrechiette with some sort of tomato sauce. Although we did not order dessert, we were provided with free sorbet. Unfortunately, I had to leave prior to the arrival of the sorbet, so I cannot comment on it. Hopefully Matt will follow up with his take on his dishes, although I think that his take on the overall meal was similar to mine. In both of my meals at Union Pacific so far, I've felt like I've been missing something. Many people whose taste I generally trust have made positive comments about the place, but my meals have been solid, technically proficient, but uninspired. There's enough promise in the space, service, and execution that I will probably return for a dinner of more of the Asian influenced dishes, as has been suggested, but so far I am mostly just a bit puzzled.

Last Friday, I visited Patria. On my last visit to Patria, we arrived late on a weekday and found the restaurant practically deserted. This time around, at prime time on a Friday night, the restaurant was jammed. With blaring music and a large room, the result was an extremely loud level of noise, which occasionally threated to make conversation difficult. The noise and the vibe at Patria gives the place the feel of a large, boisterous party, and this suits the food quite well. The food is loud, bold, and generally quite good. All the noise in the room and on the plate could be Patria's way of covering up an otherwise mediocre effort from the kitchen, but generally the nuevo Latino cuisine seems to be well executed and of high quality. It's the sort of party you're pleasantly surprised to show up at. Patria offers five and seven course tasting menus, as well as vegetarian tasting menu options. Wine pairings are offered with the tasting menus, and here is where the first real choice arises. Wine pairings are offered at four "levels", such as "reserva" and "grand reserva". For a seven course meal, the price of the pairings ranged from $50 to $225 per person. We opted for the "reserva" option at $85, and were generally quite pleased with the results. The meal started with an amuse of coconut roasted salmon over a sprout salad with habanero salsa, which was fairly insipid and with little flavor from either the coconut or the salmon. Fortunately, the salmon was immediately followed by a ceviche tasting that was quite good. Two of the three ceviches presented (ceviche tiradito and chifa ceviche) have previously been described by Cabrales; the third, a shrimp ceviche with orange, carrot, lime and habanero over a julienned salad of carrot and fennel, was the least interesting, with the ceviche completely overpowering the shrimp. Of note, although the tasting was served with an accompinament of popcorn and corn nuts to "take off the heat", none of these ceviches was particularly spicy. I found this mildly disappointing. Next up were two oysters, presented differently. The first was fried in yucca with habanero and chile poblano. The other was baked, with watercress, mustard and roasted shallot cream, gratineed with crispy plantain and bacon, and a sweet plantain corn salsa. Oysters are a food item that I have been struggling to develop an appreciation of, and I enjoyed this dish very much because it made the oysters very accessible and quite tasty, although perhaps without the typical flavor that someone that usually enjoys oysters might appreciate. Merlusa served two ways (one to each diner). First, over camarones with tomato, onions, and pepper. Second, over lobster, chorizo and salad. This was a nice piece of fish. Both of us preferred the version over lobster and chorizo, which was quite intensely flavored and rich. The fourth course was a selection of game. 1) Grilled quail over arugula and red onion salad. 2) Rabbit terrine 3) Seared duck breast with duck jus 4) Quail egg. All of this was served with a dollop of pineapple marmalade in the middle of the plate. All of these items were good, although none of them really transcended the basic description that I've provided here.. All of this was served with a dollop of pineapple marmalade in the middle of the plate. All of these items were good, although none of them really transcended the basic description that I've provided here. Fifth course was meat. My dining companion was served Argentinean beef grilled with chimichurri and bone marrow wine sauce, over slices of blue and yellow potatoes, cooked together with mushrooms; accompanied by roasted plum tomatoes and topped with palanga colored with beet juice. I received a lamb loin over black barley, mushrooms and spinach. Salad of radish, spinach and queso blanco. I did not sample the beef, but my experiences with lamb at Patria have always been quite good, and this was no exception. The meat has a very natural flavor, although I prefer the treatment that they give to lamb of rack at Patria. Next, cheese. Here my notes start to break down. I know the plate included four cheeses, two of which were manchego and cabrales. I found all of the cheeses to be fairly good, and one (which I don't remember the name of) to be very good. Finally, I'm sure we had some dessert, but I neither noted, nor do I recall, what they were. My memory after nine glasses of wine is apparently not to be trusted. Patria is clearly not operating at the same level as some of the top restaurants in the City, but the kitchen has a clear vision of what they want to turn out, and the results are generally quite compelling. Whenever you've got the urge for an upscale Latin party on your plate, Patria probably fits the bill.

To follow up on Cabrales' post, here are my observations. This was my first visit to Blue Hill, and I was quite impressed. The room has a fairly tranquil feel, and never got particularly loud, despite some of the tables being close together as has previously been mentioned. Service seemed to be very friendly, although we didn't press very hard with questions, unusual requests, or surly attitudes. (Of course, it is a given that the post-meal visit from Mike brought the overall level of service for the evening to a tremendous crescendo.) I enjoyed both of the amuses quite a bit. Often, I like neither beets nor anchovies, yet the first amuse managed to play the two flavors off of one another so the negative characteristics of each were negated on my palate. The corn soup was slightly thick, but incredibly smooth on the tongue. A strong, clear corn flavor was dominant, but the initial note was nutty, as was a long aftertaste once the corn had faded. Good amuses; they left me wanting to get on with the meal. As Mike wrote on the board, the tomatoes in the next dish were outstanding. A variety of tomatoes was presented, some bursting with sweetness and some with a slight sourness. The accompanying tomato water was a mysterious blend that was at different moments sweet, slightly bitter, and even occassionally presenting a little spciy heat from the ginger. The water, combined with the bitterness of the upland cress, was a counterpoint that enhanced, rather than competed with, the flavor of the tomatoes. Warm foie gras is not one of my favorite menu items, but our dish was quite palatable. The cocoa nibs provided only the slightest underlying hint of chocolate flavor--the dominant burnt nuttiness kept the fattiness of the foie gras in check. The wine pairing here was particularly astute, with the nutty tones of the madeira a goodmatch for the nibs; the sweetness doing its usual thing in accompaniment to the foie gras. The New Zealand hamachi was quite dense, with a distinct fish flavor that seemed to melt off of the fish to fill the mouth. At times, this fishiness was quite intense, verging on unpleasant, but never quite crossing that line. We both found it surprising that the cucumbers in this dish were served warm, almost the same temperature of the fish, but as a result they provided a temperature and texture match to the hamachi while brining clean freshenss to the palate. As with the foie gras, pork is not my favorite meat, but the Berkshire pork was an exceptional example. Slightly sweet, lush, and incredibly tender, this meat could certainly help to convince me of the merits of pork. A piece of belly was particularly nice, with just enough flavor to mellow the layers of fat that gave the piece its intenese richness. Overall, I like this food. It rarely dazzles the way some places do, but it's interesting and provides a lot of room for thought while tasting really good. I can understand why some might find it slightly understated, and think that in time the chefs do have room to turn out dishes that make the mouth more obviously happy, but I found dinner to be tasteful, thoughtful and of really excellent quality.

Lizziee has reported that Ginza Sushi-ko will be one of them. [Edited to correct spelling.]

I've read about this a couple of places, but only passing references. At least one source indicates that Keller views the opening of the New York restaurant is the point at which he'll step aside from every day cooking duties to a more managerial style. (Obviously, to a certain extent, that's inevitable, since he can't cook both places every day.) Do people have opinions about whether this is likely to effect the quality of the food at either place, or both?

Beachfan and MartyL: Thanks so much for your suggestions. I'll need to have a little cheat sheet of these notes when I actually show up at Trotter's.

Price range is probably up to $300 a bottle, $400 for a real gem. As far as varietal and style, we're trying to please a crowd, so my input probably isn't the overriding factor (nor am I even smart enough to get this right) but: 1) I tend not to like a lot of oak on white wines in particular. I'm less sure about reds. 2) Tannins--yuck. 3) Wines that I've had recently that I thouht were particularly good: Quintessa Napa Valley Red ('98) Trimbach Riesling Cuvee Frederic Emile ('89) Pride Mountain Cabernet Franc ('99) That's all I remember off the top of my head.

Wine pairings are a fun way to drink way more than usual for me. I've done the seven course wine pairing at March (six glasses), but more recently I took in the seven course tasting menu with wine pairings at Patria, which ended up being eight glasses (one for each course plus champagne to start). I'm not much of a drinker, so the second half of that meal is a bit of a blur...

One more list to elicit comments on. I'm going to Charlie Trotter's in September and want to do okay on the wine front. Am thinking of doing BYO, but since we won't be making a la carte selections and I'm not particularly smart when it comes to wine, I thought maybe it would be good to have some backup choices from their wine list. Any help?

Hamburger, no question.

Has anyone been to an event like this in the past? Is there any opportunity for interaction with the chefs?

If Amex Platinum card holders do not fully book this event, do reservations later become available for non card holders?

Why?

This has been discussed previously on egullet. I'd say it's situational--in some places it might be horribly conspicuous. In others, there may be others taking pictures (probably of each other) so you won't draw particular attention to yourself by snapping a picture or two. Some digital cameras are really tiny, though. You could probably use some palm-sized cameras to take pictures of the menu without anyone noticing.