jerkhouse

I was visiting family recently (post bar exam travels) and found out that my cousin is married to Thomas Keller's sister. It's a huge family (I have something like 13 or 14 uncles and aunts) so these kind of things are able to go unnoticed, but I was blown away. My uncle and aunt are showing me pictures and they're like "there's Elizabeth with Jacques Pepin at a celebration for her uncle Thomas's Beard award." So I'm like "?????" - And she asks "Have you heard of Thomas Keller?" Haha, I don't think they have/had any idea how much of a wannabe foodie I am; my starstruckness seemed to take them completely by surprise. So my cousin gets to say stuff like "my brother in-law Thomas keller stayed with us this week" which I imagine is followed by "I've never eaten so well in my life."

the story made msnbc http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7613524/site/newsweek/

"I've got nipples Focker, can you milk me?" something about the title of the thread; I just pictured someone tugging on little potato teats. I would say this has something to do with watching too much Arrested Development; it encourages this kind of thinking.

I grew up in Tennessee, my mom fried chicken all the time, and I've never had chicken backs. I've got to admit, eating it wouldn't be my first instinct, but if other people eat it.. Catchy thread title though. I don't think I would have read just "fried chicken backs" but the promise of something "taboo" lured me in; haha.

I was always really hungry when I was in bootcamp because our meals were so small. The servers completely controlled your portions, which were always pretty miserly. We could get a maximum of two slices of bread with our meals, but there was no butter limit! So I would always make butter sandwiches; 8 cold pats of butter between two slices of white bread. Before that, I didn't like butter if it wasn't melted into something, but after bootcamp I was a changed man. My friend would pile a bunch of pats in a bowl with some salad dressing and eat it with a spoon.

I'm southern, and like southern food the best in general, but I think I've got to say lobster rolls from New England. Maybe it's an underexposure thing and I wouldn't be so hyped about them if I could eat them all the time, but I daydream about eating those things.

I get it, Kit. In fact, that is my point too. The small guy in a new restaurant is willing to please. The poor chef is probably congratulating himself on his brilliant move to interact with the customer. Nowhere in the incident narrated was it indicated that harsh words were uttered. I am tempted to bring to this discussion the Manresa story. It is somewhere in the California thread. I cannot seem to find the link. I think it is we who interpret reactions and label them. There is a thin line between 'gracious' and 'defensive'. ← I'm not sure that it should matter whether the chef interpreted his gesture as a brilliant act of customer diplomacy. The question everyone seems to be debating is whether this was an appropriate way to handle the situation, not whether the chef acted with malice. If the chef honestly thought that this was an appropriate way to handle the problem, I think many of the posters will agree with me that he has some pretty undeveloped people skills. You've met these people before, they think there's nothing wrong with telling you that your girlfriend has big boobs because it's a compliment; yeah, they honestly thought they were saying something nice, but the majority of people would still likely find it inapropriate. Like Grub said, regardless of the chef's personal characteristics, he demonstrated what has been commonly interpreted as "lack of grace and social skills -- and possibly a lack of business skills." Whether his behavior met the Webster's definition of defensive or not seems irrelevant in the face of all the posts by people who agree that, taking the whole restaurant's interests into consideration, this wasn't a good way to handle the problem. (and I'm going to weigh in with my two cents, I wouldn't be happy if this happened to me either, but I'm a wuss about complaining about food so it's a moot point)

In my friend's defense, he was high when he made this, but I was over at his house and he asked me if I wanted some seafood alfredo. I said, "sure." He started to look in his cabinets and stuff and he was like, "oh, I don't have all the ingredients, but I've got this bottle of alfredo sauce, it's not the best, but it will be alright. He then grabs an onion, dices it, and throws it in a skillet. I was thinking, "well, okay." So he starts cooking the pasta; after about 10 minutes of not stirring the onions on high heat they were half caramelized and half blackened. Trying to be tactful, I asked, "are those onions done "caramelizing" and he looked over and said, "Yeah, they're getting there" at which point he stirred them a little and left them until they were 100% black. He then deglazed the pan with the bottle of grocery store alfredo sauce, which when combined with the blackened onions somehow turned a bright orange. Then he added some white wine vinegar (because he didn't have any wine..... ??), and stirred in a stick of butter, because, apparently the jar from the store isn't rich enough. It was finished off with some imitation crab chunks. It really wasn't all that bad in the end, not disgusting like some of the abominations posted on the thread already, but it was definitely a strange interpretation of alfredo.

Could some more people post some experiences? I find these stories very interesting.

I assume your All-Clad SS soup pot has metal handles? If so, your soup pot will do just fine in the oven, as well as on the stove top, and you don't need to worry about going from one to the other. I used to do that all the time with my Revere stainless steel stock pot (aluminum disk bottom) with no ill effect. ← My pots and pans do have metal handles. Thanks for settling my nerves on this! ← You'll be fine. I put my all clad SS in the oven all the time. I think a few people even used them as test vessles in the recent EGCI thread on braising. Haha, for all that money they better go in the oven.

That's the same thing I thought about the now whole foods. I was thinking, "can they really afford to run this place on a day to day basis?" They seem to have way more prepared food than Central Market, but it may just be the layout; everything is spread out a little more. But the place was bumpin' and if any city can support a giant whole foods, it's Austin; people are fanatical about that place. Anyway, I hope it does well; it's in a far more convenient location for me than central market. I still like central market better though, mainly because they sell a lot of basic stuff at normal HEB prices; whole foods seems a bit more expensive, and I'm in school. But if I ever need to make a dish that calls for 75 different kinds of mushrooms, I'll be headed straight to whole foods.

I'm not a real lawyer, but I play one in law school. It sounds completely preposterous, a customer's offhand response to a common question won't be given any binding effect by a court. I don't even think that restaurant claims based on the quality of the food are very common, and when something does happen, the legitimate or fraudulent plaintiff will make a scene at the restaurant as "evidence" that something actually happened. I don't think there are enough lawsuits where the customer leaves the restaurant in peace and later sues over glass in their food to justify such a widespread custom. real lawyers feel free to correct or agree with me

I went there today. It's like a carnival there or something; I think people may have been hanging out there just because they didn't have anything to do. Whoever posted about the mushrooms was right, they had so many. Anyway, it's a really cool place, but I'll have to go back there when I have about 2 hours to explore. I'm not even sure I made it into every section of the store; I got kind of disoriented. The "fishmonger" was amazing. The meat department looked a little more expensive than central market. I had my eye on a lambroast, and I think it was 20/lb compared to 18/lb at central market, but that might have been 18.99. What is it with these places and sausage? Every time I go to central market (and now whole foods) I think, "who the hell is eating all this sausae?" but it looks good. Maybe I'll pick some up next time.

Where is it? Did they redo a previous location, or is it brand new?

thanks for the replies. I like fish skin, so next time I get some brie, I'll try out the rind. I hope I like it because it would sure make eating it a lot easier; I usually leave about half the cheese attached to the rind because I would even avoid the cheese that was close to it - I have no idea why I was so spooked by it; I'm not generally a picky eater.