jhlurie

Bumping this topic up as a counterpoint of sorts to vengroff's a la seconde topic, about foods best enjoyed quickly after being cooked.

Winner! This reminds me a bit of a topic from a long time ago about the reverse of this--hot food people seem to enjoy more when its cold. I'm going to look for it and bump it. LATER: Here it is. Looking at it now, its not quite the opposite, but close enough...

Doesn't chorizo--in fact all sausage/salami/etc. have three different states? Wrapped, unwrapped and sliced (the first two states not being different at all for the dry stuff) . . . I know that the "expiration date" I often see on sealed packages of most sausage/salami are often as far as a year off. And remember, they hang the stuff up intentionally for months before you even get it... Sliced or unsliced. That's got to make a difference. Errr . . . I'd say smell it if the package were open and/or the chorizo was pre-sliced for some insane reason inside of the package. But if its not . . . just eat it.

Jim, You might get a free meal and a chance to eat sheeps head Hah. C'mon guys. Tony is hardly making Emeril money.

If its properly vacuum sealed, with little to no air inside, couldn't it theoretically last for months? Not that you'd realistically want to risk doing that.

Been far too long since I've been to LA to have any kind of recommendation, but I'd think that Mexican food in the area would be "especially good in LA" in comparison to either DC or NYC, as well as fitting in with your budget. "Unique", I can't help much with.

FYI, MatthewB: = bulgogi, bulgoki, bulkogi, pulgogi or several million other spellings = galbi, kalbi or countless other variants Koreans rule when it comes to BBQ beef, but I've also had great BBQ pork loin as well ("Daeji", I think its called). Chicken... its rarely been as good, though. Hey, Google is great... this is useful . . . although I'm not sure I understand why beef is SOH-GO-GI and yet BBQ Beef is BUL-GO-GI.

ecr, Thanks for the counter-point. Very educational.

Mexican cuisine, very much like Indian, is actually a group of different regional cusines lumped together by outsiders. I'm far from expert, but the Mexico and West/Southwest United States (which gets a bit more traffic than Mexico) forums are probably good places to dig (or ask) for more specifics. I don't know all of the spices used, but a least a few of them are identical to Indian cuisine--cilantro/corainder (usually as a leaf, not as a seed), salt, black pepper, red pepper and chili oil (although I don't think from the same types of chilis as Indian), anise, marjoram, thyme, Chipotle (which is actually derived from a smoked pepper), garlic, onion, cinnamon, oregano, parsley, basil, cumin... I'm sure I'm missing tons of others. Wait... I just found a link to a list of Mexican spices.

Again, I must reiterate the fact that I never believed that most of these dishes had any relation to curry powder, although I am interested to hear which of them may or may not have had curry leaf. http://www.curryhouse.co.uk/rsc/madras.htm - for an example of what someone thinks Madras is, although they seem to be describing it as a bit hotter than I recall, and they are certainly using cookie-cutter ingredients. Look, to me "curry powder" is simply a shortcut that some people take when they don't want to mix spices themselves. I certainly don't like or approve of the idea of people using the same mix of spices in different dishes, and I'm certainly not assuming its used even by the worst cook in dishes like Tikka Masala, Biryaani or Sag Paneer--where it would be ridiculous to include some of the spices which seem to be included in some of these curry powders, most especially but not exclusively the chili powder. Quite the opposite, in fact. I noticed my loose use of Aloo and almost edited it, but frankly most of the Indian Potato SIDE dishes I've had WERE spiced heavily for the very logical reason that Potatoes have very little taste themselves. As a vegetarian side, I've been virtually assured that a Potato dish will be spicy, but that's probably because Gujerati cuisine isn't as accessible to me. As an ingredient in something else... obviously this doesn't apply. Its interesting that you say that Rogan Josh shouldn't be spicy. I'll admit that the best ones I've had weren't, but I've also had many lesser ones that were.

Disect away. We don't even have to talk about less-known dishes to discuss this, since posters who eat less Indian food may lose their point of reference. Common dishes like Tikka Masala (although I've been told at least a few times that Tikka Masala is not a genuine Indian dish) and Saag Paneer are--at least ideally--only moderately spiced. Most Biriyani I've had is mild as well. Jalfraze, Madras, Tava and Korma, in various variants, I've had in a wide range from mild to spicy. On the "spicy" side? Rogan Josh, Vindaloo (obviously!), most of the Aloo dishes... stuff like that. I can't see my experience in this being much different from most people's.

Well, I did say: in recognition of the fact that what I WAS referring to was hardly a universal--or even frequently used--ingredient. And yes... curry is a class of things more than it is a single thing. My casual use of it bordered on the improper, in the way that many Westerners misuse it--to refer to the sauce as if we were referring to curry powder--which I agree is not at all present in many of the things I refer to as being in "a curry". And curry powder certainly isn't a single thing, since it's a blend which can include cumin, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, cloves, tumeric, black pepper, ginger, mustard, fennel, nutmeg, red pepper and many other things. And none of this necessarily has anything to do with Curry Leaf (Murraya koenigii), except that its trying to imitate it, and I suppose not always faithfully. And to complicate things even more I understand there is something called a "Curry Plant" (Helichrysum angustifolium), which is NOT the plant which Curry leaves used in Indian food come from, but which instead supplies oils for fruit flavors and scents. Was just lazyness of speech Suvir . . . although I confess that I had to look up the difference between the curry plant and the OTHER curry plant, and also refresh myself on a few of the possible permeatations of curry powder ingredients. Personally I blame the British, since its easier than taking personal responsibility. They invented the concept of Curry Powder (at least as a commercial pre-packaged entity), since apparently they had trouble shipping the leaf home. Given this turn in the coversation, I'm going to ask next time at my favorite Indian place whether or not they are using curry leaf (then again I don't really know a lot about how well it grows around here--although I do frequently spot whole leaves of SOME type in some of my dishes, which since I've never really looked could have just as easily been bay leaves). Frankly I never thought to ask before, but if they aren't I'm assuming that they using a good enough mix of other spices--which are NOT coming mass-packaged out of a tin or something like that. BTW: This reminds me a lot of the discussion we had once here on eGullet about Wasabi (in that case I actually had no idea that western Wasabi is not... actually Wasabi).

Much of the best Indian I've had was not spicy at ALL. It's always spicy in the sense that its heavily seasoned, but I've had plenty of dishes where curry and/or chilis--if present--were moderate, by design. Mexican... same thing to an extent. I think people outside of these countries, by and large, have picked up on the spicy aspects of these food and often overlook the more subtle dishes. They don't sell as well, I guess. Now to be totally up-front--I love spicy food. But I'm generally more inclined to eat Thai, Chinese or even Italian food spicy than Indian or Mexican--although I suppose the low-point of my "spicy" scale is higher than most people's. Oh... given the fact that there is only one really good Indian place near me, I don't eat Indian all that often anymore. But back when I worked down the street from a great place I ate lunch there twice a week.

How (if at all) does the process of popping change the taste?

Even if the economy IS in worse shape (and if it is its only a short-term downturn--its definitely in better shape than a year ago), China 46 is a CHEAP restaurant, relatively. Under that logic, more expensive places--and almost everything except "Chinese Kitchen" places would qualify--would be hurting worse than C46. There are a lot of OTHER things which can cause a restaurant to lose business--a change in chefs, a bad review, a history of write-ups for health code violations. But all of those would have to be public knowledge. It would be truly strange if they were known to everybody EXCEPT eGullet members. One contributing factor which has occured to me is location. C46's location has never been all that great. In the wake of stellar reviews people were willing to travel to get there. Inevitably that wears off. But it just doesn't seem to be ENOUGH. The place went from being completely full on weekends to having one or two tables filled at max the last few times I've been there.

It's empirical proof--from observation and deduction. The restaurant was doing reasonably good business immediately before the SARS scare. And its not now. In this same period, reports of other Chinese restaurants doing badly--here and in other cities with SARS reports--are playing on the news. The economy is somewhat better than this time last year, so I don't see that as a possible explanation. There's a natural falloff from the peak levels that the restaurant got after being reviewed, and that's to be expected, but its a bit far-fetched to think that this would coincidentally catch-up with the restaurants business so dramatically at the exact same time as the SARS scare. Unless I'm misreading you. Are you asking if people are staying away because the restaurant HAS a SARS case? They don't--we're talking about paranoia here. Its the fear of SARS keeping people away, not SARS itself. Not that I would walk into the restaurant and talk with them about SARS. There's a natural fear to be expected from them that talking about it would only draw more attention to it and someone might hear and react to it out of context. But here, at least, we can discuss it in context.

Mark, it might make a difference if we get some kind of press coverage. "Food Group tries to save fave restaurant from the spectre of SARS" or something like that.

The two best things were definitely the sticky rice and the curry puffs. Unlike the majority, I didn't think that the pad thai was all that sweet. I'm not aguing for sweet pad thais as opposed to more savory ones... its just that in my opinion this was only a slight bit too sweet--it wasn't sweet to the extent where the sweetness eliminated any of the other tastes. This is the kind of place which might improve with feedback and/or time.

Steven... what makes you think this is a restaurant exclusive "problem"? Retail stores used the .99/.95 cent scheme for years before restaurants ever did, and actually I'm pretty sure that fast food outlets may have been in there pretty early as well. And the auto pricing example, which someone already gave, goes back a long way too. I seem to remember something about this from a psych class I took about 15 years ago. As tammylc has already said, it's got something to do with an unconscious calculation to a lower number. People see $24.99 and at least some of them stop after the first two digits and think "$24" instead of "$25". Think about .99 cent stores. Is .99 a significantly better deal than, let's say... $1.07? But with .99 the mind is thinking "its almost free". With a $1.07 on the price tag its frequently thinking... "well... I've got to use two dollar bills to pay for this".

Still mostly air, although I had Chinese food about an hour ago and an Altoids Breath Strip about 20 minutes ago.

Air. Yum!

How about calling it "We Don't Have SARS 46".

Yes, along with this "Merovingian" being completely unncessary to the plot--in fact being a huge distraction to the proper flow of the film.

Engrish isn't exclusive to Japan apparently.... the Koreans eat "Sexy Potatoes"

I'm a Xylitol 333 man myself. Same company, but new flavors (Peach Mint, Lime Mint and Apple Mint) in spiffier packaging that the older flavors (Ginseng, Lemon Mint and one other flavor, which its pissing me off that I can't remember...) Apparently a company named Lotte is also a big perveyor of Xylitol sweetened gum in Korea, and Xylitol is also used in Europe as well (in fact I recently had a Turkish gum called "Relax" which used Xylitol).