LaNiña

...leave the cover off of my Weber grill, then have it rain, and have the ash turn to gray brown mush and pour down my landlord's deck...

Progresso canned caponata. In an emergency, I put it in a nice bowl and serve it with triscuits and good breadsticks.

suzanne, chill the hell out, please. really. your reaction is disproportionate.

I feel strongly about this. If you (FG) think that the restaurant warrants inclusion in the book, for any reason at all, then put it in. No restaurant owner has the "right" to exclude themselves. If there were some bizarre circumstance involved that you happened to know about, then maybe for humanitarian reasons (though I couldn't imagine what they might be) you might decide to honor their request. But this is not the case here. As for women getting hit on in bars - it's just not the same thing, at all. Start a new thread about getting hit on in bars, if somebody wants to discuss it further, perhaps.

holy crimini, fatman

Like restaurateurs are suddenly the arbiters of good and proper spelling?

whatevuh. use whatevuh ya like, i suppose. it's not that importa. ha. that wasn't even fungi.

I just went on about 10 different mushroom websites and they all say portabella. Do a google on "mushroom varieties" and you'll see.

Not to be obnoxious, but it's portabella, not portabello. Now carry on, carry on.

i know i'm doing something right when plots has to say to me "if i can get a word in"

And they get to drink their wine, that's the point - they get to drink the wine they've cellared and waited to open. And they get to have it with great food.

Okay, I"ve been dying to ask this. What is this "took in" business? And now I see that Jordyn used it too. I thought it was a Cabby-ism. 'splain, please. What happened to "ate?"

i wanted steve to address it. and considering nina's feet are dangling out of his arse, i was hoping she'd have some thoughtful input as well beyond "yeah, what he said." yo, how come when I disagree with Plots, no comments, but when I happen to agree with him, my head's up his proverbial arse?

Any idea what his reasons are?

Cabby's in love.

i wanted steve to address it. and considering nina's feet are dangling out of his arse, i was hoping she'd have some thoughtful input as well beyond "yeah, what he said." I should be so lucky! Ha. Anyway, I'd rather hear his take on it than mine, I don't have as much to say about this, truly. And don't feel like getting into a whole friggin' megillah about it. He's avoiding my last point in the personal taste thread, too.

and she proves my point unknowingly. how did that prove your point? i'm just saying that it's ridiculous to generalize and say "a lot of rich people are cheap." lots of people are cheap, lots of people are generous, lots of people are whatever they are - i don't think that people with money are necessarily cheaper than people without.

I'm just saying that I think it's *likely* that people who are serious about wine, who went through the trouble of bringing serious wine with them, will *probably* be more serious about the food they order, which in *many* cases will mean spending more money. And about the rich people being cheap thing, hey, there are cheap people and generous people at all levels of richness/poorness. And yes

Why is that absurd, Tommy? I think there's probably something to be said for the idea that people who are serious about wine are probably serious about the food they eat with it. So it would be okay to assume that the serious wine drinkers would spend more money to get serious food...

Oh, and I highly recommend getting the coconut drink in addition to whatever you bring. Nothing relieves the heat of the food better. Their iced coffee is wonderful, too.

Yeah, there's no wine around there. And I haven't been thrilled with the beer selection in the 'hood, although it's tolerable. I sometimes bring from elsewhere.

And the nice part is you can buy the wines at their shop - the info is on the site, too.

I was blown away by Babbo's wine list. It's on their website.

I love Waterfalls, too, for cheap eats. Syrian, family owned and run, on Atlantic Ave. near Clinton. One block from Sahadi's. I think it's the best baba ganouj in the city, among other great dishes. Check out the little older head-kerchiefed woman in the kitchen - she's doing the cooking. She's the mother of the Wa'afa, the owner, who serves as manager/waitress. Couldn't be nicer or friendlier. BYO.

Thanksgiving is now "owned" by my little sister, who has some miracle magic she does to a turkey. I can't eat turkey anywhere else at this point, because hers is so good. And she's told me a zillion times what she does, but it just doesn't come out that way when I do it. It's impossible to stop eating it. I love that bite when all of these things are on the fork: turkey, stuffing, sweet potato, cranberry sauce, gravy.