russ parsons

one thing i've learned about espresso geeks (and i am one)--there is NO such thing as overkill.

hey richard, have you tried alt.coffee? that's where the wild things are. seriously, some incredibly knowledgeable coffee freaks and they are extremely generous with their knowledge. i have miss silvia, but of course have no info on others of her line.

it's funny, different cooks have remarkably different ways of making gratins. i did a piece on that once. i think my favorite is madeleine kamman's from "savoie": Rub a gratin dish with garlic and butter it well. Slice 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes very thin. Toss them with salt, pepper and nutmeg and arrange them in the pan. Cover with 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream and bake at 325 degrees until brown, about 1 1/2 hours (she also provides the great tip that you should periodically break the crust that forms and submerge it in the unbrowned cream).

well, palates are different. i don't mean that as a banality, but i have a very acidic palate. i really like wines that are tart. i find that they have backbone and structure and that they are wonderful with food because they kind of cleanse the palate and get it ready for the next taste. on the other hand, maybe they're just sour.

in looking back over the thread, i thought i really needed to be clearer about my deep affection for the cafe. if i had to pick one place to eat, it would be on my short list of less than half a dozen. compared to that, of course, anything else will seem a little less.

i would certainly give them a phone call. i can hear the cash register ringing, particularly if you have a record of having refused use.

the article is nothing more than a provocation, more interested in getting people buzzing than anything constructive. why does slate do this so often? because we always seem to bite. in most cases, i would rather drink sauvignon blanc than chardonnay. in fact, last month i had the 2004 silex at citronelle (thanks mark!) and i have to say it was one of the best white wines i've ever tasted.

max, i bow to your greater experience with the downstairs restaurant, but it seems to me that the differences between the cafe and the restaurant are not nearly so great as those between bouchon and the french laundry (not a value judgement in either direction). the food at the restaurant always seems to me to be very cuisine bourgeois--the kind of cooking you'd expect to find at a really good home cook or at a good 1-star, perhaps 2, restaurant. they don't try to make the kinds of statements that keller does at tfl. like i said, this is not a value judgement, i just didn't want people going to chez panisse expecting whimsical tiny portions served on stacks of fine china.

i'm coming to this late, so forgive me. but i just did a piece a month or so ago that danced around the idea of terroir in california. i took one vineyard that sells its grapes to many winemakers, talked to the winemakers and tasted their wines and then tried to find commonalities and differences. it was quite interesting. in most cases, you could find them, although sometimes you had to look hard (and in some cases, it was only in apposition to the other wines from the same winemakers). but doing a lot of deep thinking about it (hey, i had to make multiple trips up to buellton and back), it occurred to me that terroir in wine really depends on several factors: 1) commonality of place (this is pretty obvious: there must be climate and soil factors in common, whether it's medoc or rutherford bench; 2) commonality of technology (this is not so obvious: winemaking signature can obscure even the most forceful of terroir characteristics); and, maybe even most elusive, 3) commonality of aesthetic (the wines must be intended for similar purposes: this was particularly true in the central coast, where there is a real collision between old-style burgundy heads and the new-style showcase wine guys). running this past some folks who know a whole lot more about the subject than i do, i was surprised that they agreed so readily, and pointed out that once were fairly monolithic terroirs in france are no longer that way, as wineries adopt new technologies and winemakers feel freer to "express themselves" (for better or worse).

the cafe is one of my favorite restaurants anywhere (there is a jet blue flight that leaves long beach at 10, arrives oakland at 11:15 and i can be at the restaurant by 12:45 ... i've got it figured out). i do like downstairs, but not nearly so much. perhaps it's a matter of expectations. the cafe feels so casual and spontaneous that something like a perfect green salad (or a dessert of pixie tangeries and barhi dates, per the set menu you photoed seems like a discovered treasure. downstairs, expectations are quite a bit higher and sometimes that kind of food doesn't quite live up to it. that's my experience anyway.

with all due respect to every other almond cake, the one true heroic version is lindsay shere's in "chez panisse desserts". try it and you will never go back to another. i hadn't fixed it in about a year, and this weekend a friend served it. at the first bite i knew it was lindsay's.

everyone needs a reason for living and far be it from me to deprive you of yours. but i like them. i like peas, too, but garden peas go starchy so quickly i find it's about 1 batch in 5 that really has flavor. i like pea sprouts a lot--just made a risotto with them ... add them at the very last minute so they barely wilt and stay bright green. also baked halibut in paper on a bed of pea shoots and topped with herb butter. there are no bad ingredients, just bad cooks.

they're not quite the same thing. the shoots are the tips of the vines. sprouts would be the infant plant.

i agree. the butt has more meat, but it's a little harder to get to. the hip bone is a little bit of a bear to get out, but nothing a reasonably competent home cook couldn't do. once it's removed, though, you'll probably want to finish butterflying it and cook it that way. i think you really need the full leg to be able to bone it and tie it and have it stay that way after cooking.

i agree with all the recommendations for pasqual and the compound and i'd add my personal favorite, la choza. great patio, great new mexican food. i loved this reference to the la fonda pastry shop! long, long ago, when my wife and i were first living together, we'd run up to santa fe for the weekends, in large part because we could get pastries at the la fonda. they were unlike anything i'd ever tasted (granted, i was pretty much of a winchell's eating sportswriter at the time). years later, during a long drunken lunch with my friend michel richard, he started talking about how much he liked santa fe. i said "santa fe, when were you in santa fe?" turns out, he started that pastry shop and was the one making those pastries. he has certainly gone on to bigger, though perhaps not better, things (there's not much better than those pastries were).

got to this late, sorry. yes, that's the place, exactly. i think it's la stalla (the stall) rather than la stella (the star). it is, after all, in the stalls. at one point, i think they were talking about doing some kind of bnb concept. i remember one time walking up there one early evening in fall, and hearing a barrage of gunfire going off around me. first day of boar season. they also do the cacciocavallo, where they split the cheese, stuff it with prosciutto and roast it on the grill. why has it been so long since i've gone to umbria?

i'm interested, fat guy, in what you would propose to remedy this (aside from the usual: play nice! i mean it!). surely you're not suggesting footnoting of menus: "the mashed potatoes for this dish were inspired by Joel Robuchon; the crisp-skinned salmon by Thomas Keller" (which, incidentally, pretty much how i write my headnotes ... maybe that's it--headnotes for menu items). and then how far back would the search have to go. would there be a statute of limitations?

or, ahem, "how to read a french fry," which has an absolutely brilliant (IMHO) chapter on meat cookery? how about a little love, fellas?

one of the best cooks i know (at a michelin 3-star) never uses a thermometer, but always carries a metal skewer that she uses to poke the meat. when it feels right, it's done. her son, who went to culinary school, uses a thermometer--but not for braises, certainly.

one question more: has the chef at the oriental ever claimed that his dishes were his original inspirations? or, as i think is probably more likely, has he credited him informally by saying in interviews that he learned a lot working for jose? this is not the same thing as crediting him on his menu, but if i recall, jose doesn't credit adria on his either. this is a game that has been going on for decades (that i'm aware of) and possibly centuries (thank god i'm not that old). i once proposed a story tracing the family tree of some famous dish. didn't get accepted, but imagine trying to trace the lineage of robuchon's mashed potatoes? certainly, it's frustrating for the chefs who are copied from. and certainly, they will bitch about it in private (and then, sometimes, smile abashedly when it's pointed out that their creation owes a bit to someone else's). it's part of the cooking game, just like complaining about no-shows.

i don't know anyone who barbecues (as opposed to grills) or braises meat that uses a thermometer or cooks to temperature at all. it's done when it's done. thermometers are indispensible when you're trying to cook things the LEAST amount possible (steaks, poultry, etc). but they serve no purpose when you're trying to cook them the MOST.

yeah, i remember old augie escoffier, that dude would get a couple of cognacs in him and he'd start unloading on anyone who garnished consomme celestine with his damned panequets! bastards!

is la stalla still running, in the hills above assisi? that was a really remarkable little place. very plain, but great bigoli and grilled foods.

and, just to return to the topic of the thread, the argument about gmos has nothing to do with the argument about organics, though their proponents sometimes overlap. i would really advise anyone who is interested in organics to take a little time to do some research. visit an organic farm and then visit a conventional one. see how they operate. at least talk to the farmers at the markets. then make an informed decision.

well, maybe i am being argumentative. but this is something i feel strongly about. i have covered agriculture for 20 years and i know a bit about it. "organic" has become a shorthand phrase for a lot of very good practices that don't necessarily include organic. furthermore, it is reductive, breaking a very complex mix into organic (good) and nonorganic (filthy chemical users). this is just not real world. there are some farmers who overuse chemicals, but there are a lot more who use them responsibly. there is a significant gray area between pure and impure. there are many conventional farmers who use many of the techniques we might think of as organic--cover crops, beneficial insects, etc. but they do spray when they need to. look, we've got a much more serious problem in this country with the overprescription of antibiotics and the resulting immune super-bugs, but that doesn't mean we're all going to become christian scientists over it.