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You in the UK are lucky to be able to discuss this with regard to beef! I'm in New York City; we do very well for rare (or "heritage") breed pork here - those of us who care and who are willing to search it out and pay the price. But the beef situation is pretty grim. I was impressed on my one visit to Smith's of Smithfield, perhaps a year ago, and I've ogled the beef and chatted with the vendors at Borough Market. There's nothing like that there; too many well-intentioned semi-amateurs in the business. On the importance of breed, I can certainly testify to vast differences between breeds of pig raised by the same people and slaughtered at more or less the same time and in the same way; for me, Tamworths have it all over the popular GOSs and Large Blacks - there's an aromatic quality to the meat that the others lack. The smell of Tamworth lard rendering in our apartment is quite distinctive and wonderful.

Thanks, all. Oddly, I didn't see Greene's note in NY Mag - maybe it arrived while we were away. I think my question is answered.

Has anyone been to La Grenouille in recent times? With the closing of Lutece and La Caravelle, I feel I ought to cross its threshold before it too bites the dust. On the other hand, I don't want to have one of those awful knot-in-the-stomach experiences where one knows one has made a mistake.

There's excellent cold-pressed peanut oil available from an otherwise laughably "health"-oriented outfit called Baar (www.baar.com). Not cheap. You can buy it in gallon jugs. Advantage over Hong Kong packed oils is reliable freshness. It has A LOT of peanut flavor, though, so its uses are more limited than those of mass-market peanut oil.

<Sigh.> I await Koffmann's return to the London scene with eagerness. (We're New Yorkers, but are in London 3 or 4 times a year.)

Is there any news about Koffmann / Bleeding Heart Yard?

No, you have the right street. Both Fauchons in the 70s were closed, pretty much simultaneously - Madison and Third. Amusingly (to me), the previous tenant of the Madison Avenue site (St. Ambroeus) is returning.

Thanks, all. We're now all set: Le Cercle; Roka (on the Sunday); Almeida; and L'Escargot. We were determined to go nowhere we'd already been.

Thank you, Janice. I've booked the Almeida after looking at the menu on line - it seems like one of those menus on which one will always something appealing whatever sort of mood one is in.

Lafa: Do I detect an etymological link with "lavash"?

Any ideas for excellent, preferably new, London restaurants that will take last orders as late as 10:45 or 11 on a weekday night? We need one in Islington, near the Almeida Theater and the rest within striking distance (cab, tube or foot) of the West End. We weren't expecting to be in London, so haven't done our usual homework. Re: Islington, I hear wildly varying things about Conran's Almeida restaurant - anyone have any views? Thanks, all.

A few notes from a home, not restaurant, cook. Using a Foodsaver machine, I've cooked a number of things sous vide with generally good results. Other posters are undoubtedly correct that very precise temperature control is necessary to get a certain result, but even with poor temp control a very good result can be achieved. For long-cooking meat (notably pork belly and beef short ribs/flanken, as well as breast of lamb once), I set my oven to a little below 150 F (its lowest setting). On top of the range, I bring water up to that temperature in a heavy 12" braising pot. In its sealed bag(s), my meat - seasoned and with judicious use of herbs, as Steven too has suggested, and sometimes with some aromatics such as carrots - goes into the water bath. The braising pan gets covered and placed into the oven. Then I go to bed. I've cooked pork belly, pork shoulder/butt and beef short ribs for as little as 12 hours and as long as 18, with success. The sealed packages hold for quite some time under refrigeration. I usually glaze or otherwise brown the meat for service, using juices from the bag. The breast of lamb wasn't a great success; much better just simmered or braised (or indeed roasted). Steven mentioned Ducasse's Big Book; he is right that it is full of very precise instructions for everything from pig's ears to pork belly. Check the famous lard paysan recipe, which has sous vide specs for quite a few pig body parts. No one has mentioned potatoes. Vacuum seal some potatoes (such as Carolas, Charlottes, Bintjes - that kind of thing) with just a little fat - butter, duck fat, good lard - and seasoned. Again, careful with herbs and VERY careful with garlic; in fact, probably keep away from garlic unless you are looking for a very pronounced, weirdly soft garlic flavor. These can go into a pot of simmering water for as long as they take - 25 minutes, perhaps, depending on size of cut. Very potatoey flavor, great tight texture - good flavor of the chosen fat even though little is used. I'm not sure that the in-oven covered water bath would necessarily be out of place in some restaurant applications, where new equipment was not in the cards.

A different perspective: not the NY Times, but the late Seymour Britchky. He too used a four-star rating system, and the 1986 edition of his The Restaurants of New York lists the following in the three- and four-star categories. **** Chanterelle Lutece *** Auberge Suisse La Caravelle Chalet Suisse La Cote Basque Le Cygne DeMarco Gloucester House Maurice Il Nido Odeon Parioli, Romanissimo Phoenix Garden Raoul's Russian Tea Room La Tulipe

Another good thing about the Giannone chickens (one of which we happen to have eaten last night) is that, like most of the better European poultry, they're "dry processed" - they don't hang around in ice water for hours. I don't know anything about the technical side of this, but I can tell you that they brown and get crisp far more readily than the "wet" chickens typically sold in the US. They're not, for instance, shipped in Cry-o-vac.

Just to be an old bore, let me note that there are poulets de Bresse and poulets de Bresse. Yes, restaurateurs of note will get them from great suppliers, but those sold retail can vary in quality. (I'm speaking here of France and neighboring lands, not of the Bresse style chix from PA - which I long to taste.) I rarely get to cook when on vacation, but quite a few years ago I bought a Bresse chicken at the nice market in Geneva and cooked it at my sister-in-law's apartment. I don't remember what I made, but I *do* remember that the flesh was bland; very tender, very delicate, but bland. On the other hand, earlier this year I tasted one cooked en vessie at the Bristol hotel in Paris, and it was certainly the best thing of its kind I've ever had: all that tenderness and delicacy combined with a true chicken flavor. So know your farmer. Still, the chix I've been most impressed with in France on recent visits have been the more robust-tasting birds from the South-West; perhaps some enterprising smuggler could hide some of their fertilized eggs in his luggage and hatch them out in his back yard.

To revive this oldish thread: we just came back from an absolutely delicious dinner at Cafe Boulud. We don't go there often - perhaps once a year - but have never been disappointed. The pleasure was heightened by the visit having been unexpected: we were in the neighborhood and just dropped in on the off chance. The place was hoppin' even on a summer weekend night, mainly I think with regular customers, but there was one table free near the bar, and we accepted it with pleasure. No one bumped into the back of my chair all evening! "Cold" - i.e. properly tepid - seafood salad, zippy with lemongrass and chilis; addictive pissaladiere, made with fresh anchovies - huge-looking thing about 6 x 12 inches in area, but its thickness could be measured in microns (well, so could mine if you had enough microns, but you know what I mean), and it got eaten without difficulty. Good black pasta (hand cut, yet) with little clams (cockles, presumably), shrimp, minuscule octopi, squid; Tender lobster in a Thai-ish coconutty sauce, with little tomatoes, herbs and the occasional litchi or loquat. Nice selection of cheeses, all in perfect condition. OK peach cobbler with I-forget-what gelee (hybiscus?) and I-forget-what ice cream. A glass of pink Champagne and a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. I continue to find Andrew Carmellini a very impressive chef.

Or maybe BLT?

I knew this thread was going to make me envious.

Many thanks for that referral; I've joined, and will look forward to hearing details about the club/coop.

What *I* want is milk and cream from brown cows - Jersey, Guernsey - which produce richer, more flavorful milk than Holsteins. But they produce less of it . I know they're being raised SOMEWHERE in the area, but where? And where can we get the milk and cream? This is an area (along with meat, which is at last improving a little) where the NYC Greenmarkets fall flat on their faces. If I ever see another Ronneybrook stand . . . .

Let me first declare that my wife and I eat at Jean Georges every six weeks or two months – occasionally more often – and that they know us and know that we’re ever-interested in trying whatever’s new on the menu. That said, and in the full understanding that all my experiences at the restaurant have been mine and not other posters’, let me make two comments. First, the old-standby dishes remain on the menu for a couple of very good reasons. They’re good; and diners who come in once in a lifetime or a blue moon want them. My boss, who is not given to gastronomic excess, found herself there a few weeks ago for the first time, and what dish leapt out at her from the appetizer menu? The scallops with cauliflower and raisins, mentioned in earlier posts. She ordered and adored it. It’s a terrific dish. And, as to its being old-hat, well, I noticed on the spring menu of young Tom Aiken, aspiring to multiple Michelin stars in London and working hard to build a reputation as a cutting-edge chef, a dish that was obviously based on it: it remains a dish that strikes a chord in enfants terribles (if such Aiken be). Secondly, new and exciting stuff is constantly coming out of that kitchen. Vongerichten and his team may have interesting fads that last a while – for tapioca, celery, whatever – but the level of inventiveness is astonishingly high, and the creativity is always consistent with the purpose of bringing clean, vivid flavors to the plate. To me, this is in contrast to some other chefs known for bubbling creativity (Gagnaire for example), who don’t know when to stop, resulting in a muddied message and muddied flavors. Just one example of this clarity: foam (or what is now being referred to as froth – six of one . . .). So many cooks use it gratuitously without understanding what it can do. It can take a little bit of flavor/aroma and spread it all around your mouth and neighboring regions. Recent froths at Jean Georges have often been acidic (vinegar; lemon), and they have done an astonishing job in that regard: all the zip of the ingredient without a big acidic jolt. This really is on a very high level of comprehension and execution. So, let’s not start thinking that Vongerichten is slipping behind – it isn’t a race in that sense anyway, of course, but it’s hard not to portray it that way.

It's kind of interesting to see how few posts there have been here. For our part, my wife and I go out mainly to low-brow or high-brow places (when we go out at all: we tend to cook for ourselves most of the time). A restaurant such as, I don't know, Le Jardin Bistro is more likely to be a disappointment on one level or another than, say, John's pizza or Jean Georges (to mention only places that begin with J).

Well, I'll be interested to see whether this guy's prize-winning partner is able to go beyond the visual appeal of typical competition pastry work and actually deliver some flavor. I can't help thinking of the recently-closed Mondrian on Third Avenue, where the stuff looked stunning and was brilliantly executed but was flat-tasting and sometimes ill-conceived. I sometimes wish some of the Paris-based patissiers, besides Fauchon, would open branches in New York, as many have in Toyko (Pierre Herme and Dalloyau for instance). I ALWAYS wish that weren't necessary, and that local talent could fill the bill. At least we've got Payard, who by now must count as a local boy. Does anyone know whether Keller's Bouchon Bakery is going to sell pastry, or just bread?

The person quoted in that post has obviously (and perhaps chauvinistically) confused quality with style. My admittedly limited experience with Sabarsky's cakes and pastries has been excellent. In fact, if the general quality of French pastry in New York were as high as the quality of Sabarsky's Viennese pastry, we'd be in very good shape. Does this individual reveal anything about his planned bakery? Perhaps the quality will be as high as his opinion of French pastry.

I'm guessing that, pork apart, the vindaloo is similar to the one at Spice Market, yes? Perhaps, though, from Ned's description, hotter. As he said: very vindaloo - vinegary and almost smoky. I look forward to trying Kalustyan's, though I doubt that I'd be able to order a pork-free vindaloo.