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Note that Morton's kosher is nearly twice as dense (i.e. heavy per unit of volume) as Diamond Crystal, so if you're used to one it takes quite a bit of adjustment to get used to the other. Also, some food writers give precise quantities of "kosher salt" in their recipes - useless unless you know which brand they're using.

Thanks - that's what I figured. The Bodegas Rosell recommendation is much appreciated.

Any favorite bars/tabernas for a few tapas and a glass of wine within a few minutes' walk of Madrid's Atocha railway station?

In the end, we left the choice to our Geneva friends, and they've opted for Le Cigalon, at Thonex, a place they've been eager to try, and a fairly short drive from where they live. I'll post, briefly, when we've been - first week in September.

Let me bump this topic: we'll be in Cordoba in early September for three nights. We will not have a car and plan to stay in town, most likely. Favorite eating places, please, plain and fancy.

Thanks for that. Veyrat is not really right for this trip - plus, my one visit there (admittedly some years ago) did not make me yearn to go back. I'll look into the Ferme de Lormay, however.

Let me revive this with the same question - except expanded to, say, a 40-minute drive out of Geneva in either Switzerland or France. Any favorites, new or old? We're looking to take some friends out of a nice September evening, so pleasant surroundings would be a plus.

To go (further) off-topic: I think the cauliflower/scallop thing got started in the 1990s with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who browns the cauliflower (slices, not a puree) and livens the dish up with a sweet/acidic emulsion (it is still on his menu, among the "classics"). The first time I ran into it in London was at La Tante Claire in its Royal Hospital Road days; by then the cauliflower slices had turned into a puree. It is, of course, possible that the two approaches were devised independently.

Thanks, vserna!

Let me bump this topic - has anyone been to the restaurant, or does anyone have links to fairly serious reviews (in any language within reason)?

We finally visited the Stuyvesant Town Greenmarket today. It is one of the more pleasant, set up on the periphery of a lawn filled with sunbathers. Plenty of vendors, including a fish stand, a cheesemaker and several fruit-veg stands, including Migliorelli. Well worth a visit of a nice Sunday afternoon. Our walk then took us to Tompkins Square, also thriving both along Avenue A and down the side street. At either of these, you could do all your food shopping, apart from meat and liquids (although the ubiquitous Ronnybrook was present at Tompkins Sq). We continued south to buy some doughnuts on Grand Street, and were surprised to find a tiny (three vendors, was it?) CENYC Greenmarket on Grand between Essex and Norfolk. Fantasy Fruit was there, with stunning Tri-Star strawberries, along with a nice veg vendor who gave the tops of my leeks (which I didn't need) to an elderly Russian lady, who will put them in her soup pot. Yesterday at the E 82nd St market, the kid minding a veg stall responded to my question, "Are these Yukon Golds?" with "No. Potatoes". Yikes.

For what it's worth, I don't think the E 67th Street market is a Greenmarket; hence, it is not subject to any of the Greenmarket rules about where the produce comes from. Not to say that there isn't good produce there, but be aware that some (not all) of the stands may be selling the same things you can buy in a supermarket or corner greengrocer, distributed through normal wholesale channels. This began life, some years ago, as a Greenmarket, but there was some sort of dispute with the school on whose property the market is set up.

An exception to Steven's generally true observation that the more vendors the better the market is the tiny Greenmarket on Ninth Avenue and 57th. Sometimes there's only one vendor there, but he sells an amazingly wide range of vegetables of excellent quality. We bought excellent cheese a while ago at the Tomkins Square market. Has anyone visited the Sunday market in Stuyvesant Town?

The Wednesday Greenmarket on E 47th Street between First and Second is thriving. Fish from Pura Vida; a good half a dozen vegetable/fruit vendors, including Maxwell's; Ronnybrook (what else is new?); a couple of cheesemakers; a baker with appalling croissants and wonderful crumb cake. At the height of the season, now, it takes up almost the whole long block and meets our needs for everything fresh except terrestrial animal protein, bread and better milk and cream - to the point where we seem to get down to Union Square (a mere 35 minute walk) only once a month or so, which is a shame. Even in wintertime, the market's vestiges keep us in fish, cabbage and potatoes through the cold weather. And (off-topic) good bread we can buy a stone's throw away, at Corrado's in Grand Central Terminal, where okay cream is often to be found at Murray's.

Any news to report?

For what it's worth, I always eat fish with a sauce spoon when such a thing is available. "Always" is an exaggeration, of course, because this doesn't work well with a fish that actually needs to be cut (for which a fish knife is equally useless). Hence, I honestly believe that the waiter was merely trying to be helpful.

Does anyone besides me have memories of the store before they moved to East 52nd Street? It was, as I recall, on Third Avenue and 33rd Street.

Thanks, culinaryarts, for both of those suggestions. I shall file the Vienna recommendation for a future trip. Hadn't thought of KaDeWe for cake/pastry.

Oh - and how about cafes / pastry shops? I have copied the list up-thread of award-winning bakeries, but does anyone have any particular recommendations for places where we can sit down and drink coffee and eat excellent Middle European pastry?

Any thoughts about Leibniz-klause? Thanks.

If cost isn't too much of an issue, Le Bristol's poulet en vessie (must be ordered for two) is about as good a Bresse chicken dish as you'll find in a restaurant. And Ptipois is so right about the difficulty of buying a first-class Bresse chicken at retail - and also about some of those south-western chickens being more satisfying, though that's matter for a whole other thread.

Oh, but Robyn - not being able to read the signs is half the fun! But that's a thought for the Japan forum.

Thanks, Robyn. In fact, we'll be staying near Potsdamer Platz, so the Sony building might work well for after-theater. I hadn't really considered it - eating in a building with lots of restaurants in it sounds a bit, well, Japanese - but it sounds like a pretty good idea.

The key here is whether a fancy restaurant will take a late reservation. I need, of course, to find out what time the performance is over, but would like to have a few options for simpler restaurants that are open fairly late. Thanks for the endorsement of Vau, though.

We'll be in Berlin in early July, our first visit. One particular question: we'll be going to a performance at the Komische Oper. What are the after-theatre options? We would want something perfectly German - nothing Italian or Japanese, or even particularly modern (for that, we shall probably dine at either Vau or 44 one evening). Thanks.