hshiau

My favorites are: Masa's La Folie Chez Panisse Gary Danko Le Petite Robert Kiss Kyo-Ya Farallon Overrated: Boulevard Fifth Floor

Anyone see this take on moon cakes? Keeping up with the modern mooncake Here's an excerpt: Modernizing the moon cake to bridge the palate between East and West, several hotels and restaurants offer moon cakes with Western characteristics: The J.C. Mandarin is known for its ice-cold moon cake, Haagen-Dazs serves up ice-cream moon cakes, and Starbucks offers a box of six coffee flavored cakes for Y128.

I didn't mean to make it seem like the restaurant bought cheap grinders. They may have but I don't know that. The "duh" referred to me. It seems I've always like the pepper at whatever setting they were at so I never realized that you can adjust it.

All it took was one turn to mess it up. Adjustable? They're adjustable? Duh.

I love fresh ground pepper on many dishes. It doesn't matter much to me if it's on the table or if the server brings it. But they need to have to have it SOMEWHERE. Funny thing when I went to Metrazur for lunch the other day. They had pepper mills on the table but the pepper was coming out as pretty large chunks. Totally destroyed my salad.

So diners are 24x7 and coffee shops are diners that aren't 24x7? I define diners by the food I can get there at any hour....omelet, donut, salad, triple decker sandwich, souvlaki, soup, spaghetti, etc. I don't begrudge the fact that many diners do not have enough traffic to stay open all night. I kinda feel that coffee shops are diners with less variety. They serve more of the breakfast/lunch items but do not serve the souvlaki or spaghetti types of food.

there are diners all over manhattan...some are 24x7, some not. i used to frequent Starlite Diner on 69th & 1st (closes around 1am). there's also City Diner on 90th & Broadway (24x7). of course you may consider these coffee shops but they do have a full kitchen and serve a wide variety of food.

I have a friend that has made 2 reservations through American Express.

I'm Chinese and my wife is Puerto Rican (from Buffalo). Her whole experience with Chinese food had been bad take-out. While she has gotten used to eating many dishes, her preferences still lean towards the Chinese-American dishes. She does surprise me every now and then by liking something I would never have thought she'd eat. On the other hand, mostly she doesn't. However, she's a picky eater in general so I shoudn't be surprised. It's the same with French, Italian, seafood, etc.

Wow! No one has responded to this. Sounds ridiculous and would probably make a great photo opportunity but I'd love to know if someone tries this and it works!

Things have been moving kinda slowly. Not getting callbacks from contractors and also trying to enjoy the last bits of summer. Interesting thing I just saw about Home Depot. CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS Go buy your hammers there if you must. But don't say we didn't warn you if you decide to use any of their services. - The company has an unsatisfactory rating from the Better Business Bureau. - From a reader about the Long Island City HD: "The design they did for our co-op is entirely wrong. Measured wrong. Cabinets ordered wrong. Flooring wrong. Get my point? We later learned our neighbors have been waiting four months for their cabinets and the contractor said 'it's not unusual for Home Depot.'" - And check out the voluminous list of complaints on the net. Complaints range from delivery problems, inept design and installations, and terrible customer service: consumeraffairs.com, planetfeedback.com, thecomplaintstation.com. - A contractor you get through Home Depot is almost certainly going to be cheaper than an independent. But spend some time with the complaint boards before you sign one up – penny wise, pound foolish and all that. We'll run an article about reliable contractors in the next few weeks, so if you have anyone you'd like to add to our list, please email us.

A great late night place near the Omni is Globe on Pacific. You might want to make a reservation. It gets busy.

But that doesn't excuse the delays in getting the check.

Near us, there were 3 tables of convention attendees. Maybe they were blowing off the main events?

My wife and I went there tonight for dinner. Everything started really well. The service was very professional and knowledgeable. My wife had the 3 course with the seared foie gras, the wagyu beef, and a mango souffle. The foie was just ok. The texture was a bit coarse and not what I expect from a good seared foie gras. It was topped with eel, which ended up better than the foie. The wagyu beef was the big disappointment...a bit dry and tough. Totally not what I expected. The souffle however was magnificent, although my wife thought it was a bit too sweet. I had the tasting menu. Started with a cold amuse in an egg, then the ceasar salad soup, which was very nice. Then came a bento box with the same throwaway wooden chopsticks. A couple of the items were very good (don't remember everything) but the rest was just ok. In fact, while most of the meal was good, there were no wow's for me. The real disappointment was the service later on. Things got a little busier and the server stopped paying any attention to us. We sat for a long period of time before ordering dessert. He never asked about coffee. After we were done and were sitting around for awhile with empty glasses of water, he finally asked if we needed anything else...maybe some coffee. After the coffee, it then took about 20 minutes before we got the check. No petite fours, nothing. I don't know if the wait staff are more stressed out with the convention in town (the restaurant was full) but I thought the service in the last hour and a half was inexcusable.

yeah...my thoughts exactly.

We went to Poggenpohl and Home Depot Expo this past weekend. We had a good conversation with the person at Poggenpohl. We gave her our floor plan and she said she would review it, come up with some suggestions, and sit down with us again to give us an initial estimate. Even on the low end, Poggenpohl will be well beyond our planned budget. She also said that installation does cost extra. However, it would be interesting to see what they think. One item of note: we talked about appliances and when I mentioned some of the negative reports on Sub-Zero refrigerators, she said that they were fine and we shouldn't listen to consumers; rather we should speak to appliance distributors. We spent 2 hrs walking around Home Depot Expo but unfortunately, it was near closing so we didn't get a chance to sit down with the designers there. We're going again soon.

I hate to go off-topic here but I'm raising a family in the city. I find it very pleasant to live here and our school (private) is excellent. I've got a large park (Central Park) a block from me, Lincoln Center a block from me, and endless museums. I must say that, with kids, I'd rather stay in the city....if I have the resources. As for safe foods..yes my daughter prefers pasta to anything else, but I don't believe in letting her dictate all her food choices. She needs to try new things. If we let her have her way when she was younger, she'd be eating nothing but plain pasta with butter, hotdogs, chicken nuggets and french fries every day.

maybe we're just fooling ourselves. need to re-evaluate.

And if he does that floor plan - he can post it here too. Robyn i did a quickie in visio. Not sure if this is how a floor plan should look but...

I'm not concerned about the plumbing since the refrigerator does not have an ice maker...an I'd be moving the refrigerator to the side of the kitchen with the plumbing. But given our space limitation on that side, we may end up leaving the sink and dishwasher where they are (new ones of course), and move the fridge next to the sink. Only problem is that there's not that much room on that side and we were looking at a 36". We'll have to see.

I've got a question about hoods. I'd like to get one so that we don't get grease all over the kitchen every time we cook. However, since we don't have anywhere to vent, I understand that we need to use one that recirculates the air through charcoal filters. Someone told me that this isn't worthwhile. Is this the case? Also, it seems like you can get recirculating kits for some hoods. How much extra does it typically cost for this?

Actually, what I was thinking of doing is moving the sink and dishwasher to the right so I get a corner sink, and then moving the refrigerator to where the dishwasher is now. I'd prefer not moving the range since that would mean moving the gas hookup. With the range by itself, I could center it and have good counter space on both sides.

That's interesting. I think this is a result of the health-conscious eating here. Skinless breast meat has a whole lot less fat that dark meat with the skin. Funny thing is that in Asian societies, the dark meat is preferred because it has more fat.

My wife's a doctor. She'll prescribe something to keep us nice and sedate for the next couple of months.