jhlurie

I've still got one tucked away somewhere. Its good for boiling water, and maybe pasta or rice. Fun for the whole family.

Of course it is. Same went for TGI Friday's in its heyday.

Great compilation. Its nice to see this stuff in one place.

Well if there are eight, thats news to me. The three I'm familiar with (Fort Lee, Englewood and Cliffside Park) have all been around for many years. I would have checked their current domain listing, but oddly enough, they seem to have surrendered their domain name. They used to have itsgreektometaverna.com EDIT - Actually they must have changed the domain name for some reason. It's http://www.itsgreektome-taverna.com/ now (although their menus have the version without the dash after "me" printed on them) Website claims six locations (Fort Lee, Englewood, Cliffside Park, Westwood, Ridgewood, and Holmdel), although who knows how old the content on it is. It also reveals that Cliffside Park is the original, which is actually how I remembered it.

dude, please to click. open on satsterday fer sher. Easier said than done, tommy. I can't find the hours on that website. As I recall from their sign, they are open every day except Monday, usually until 6PM. Suppose we could call. oh, sorry jon. would you like me to call and post the hours here? jeesh. Ha. Just don't act like a know it all, pal. I spent a couple minutes scouring that website convinced that the hours HAD to be there. I suppose its a bit hard to believe that they'd go through the trouble of a website and not bother to post hours, unless they change them regularly or something.

dude, please to click. open on satsterday fer sher. Easier said than done, tommy. I can't find the hours on that website. As I recall from their sign, they are open every day except Monday, usually until 6PM. Suppose we could call.

There are three "It's Greek to Me" locations. Can you be more specific about which one he was cloning? The three locations actually vary quite a bit in terms of both appearance and food.

We had a fairly extensive discussion a while back on this, but I've come to the conclusion that it must have been in the dearly departed "off topic" area, since I can't find the bloody thing. I recall a humorous suggestion that we try and plan an eGullet event at "The Restaurant" and have fun with the whole thing.

As discussed elsewhere, Fink and I coincidentally showed up at pretty much the same time. I even suggested to him that he try and work something out with the Pickelicous people to resell, assuming they aren't mortally offended at the concept of someone enjoying eating a pig and eating one of their pickles at the same time. The spicy pickles are definitely the best thing there, although the horseradish pickles are a very close second. The sour pickles are very good, but in my opinion a waste of time since the spicy and horseradish varieties have much more complex and interesting tastes, and are still sour underneath. Surprisingly, the pickled celery is okay. I didn't expect garlicky, briny celery to taste good, but its not bad. Tried a few relishes. The sweet/hot relish was pretty damned good. Among the various chip brands, they seemed to have plenty of Zapp's chips, which apparently is like... the official chip of New Orleans. I grabbed a few bags and they ain't bad... The candied-up pretzels are kind of neat, although hardly unique. It's sort of the kind of thing you'll buy just because you are there, but won't go out of your way for.

Good for reheating leftovers W/O drying them out. Cooking bacon for a quick BLT. Quickly heating a single cup of water for tea. Steam cooking stuff. Sort of.

Everything described by the Perlows is in Bergen County, not Rockland. Its nearby, of course, but if you keep at it (maybe in the NY State board) you might get some recommendations that are even closer. A broad recommendation: Piermont, NY.

I don't know if it was technically a sorbet (the high alcohol content made it more of a "slushee"), but eGullet big-boss-brains Jason and Rachel Perlow had some of this stuff frozen at one point a few weeks ago. It works pretty well as a frozen concoction.

In fact, the owner told me that the desserts were shipped in from the bakery located right next to Kervan, in Cliffside Park! Having never been there, I visited tonight to verify, and it does indeed seem to be the same stuff. Cihan Patisserie 358 Lawton Ave. Cliffside Park, NJ 201-840-6111 The baklava was $6.99 per pound, and the Kazandibi was $2.00 for a hefty size "roll".

It almost seems as if some of the argumentation is saying that spices are being used to cover up the innate taste of inferior quality ingredients, not necessarily spoilage.

but... what do we do with the phrase "that's a spicy meat-a-ball" if we ban spice?

As usual, in order to have a strong argument, Steve discounts the fact that time has had an affect on this question. Sure spices were originally used to cover the "taste" of bad ingredients. In some places they may still be. But the passage of time has altered the situation in many other places. Also, this totally ignores the fact that SOME spice can be used to highlight flavors already present in an ingredient (see JAZ's recent article for some support). The Balic's refinement on Steve's position, that spice must either be a "good" or "bad" thing in relation to the end product is overly simplistic as well. Sometimes its a matter of the "taste" of the eater, sometimes its a matter of the intentions of the chef, and sometimes it does come down to the quality of the ingredient. And its not merely a matter of "bad" or "good", I'd argue that a piece of prime Kobe Beef might deserve different attention from a nice solid American cut, even though neither is "bad". Also different types of ingredients deserve different consideration. Find me a person who truly enjoys the inate taste of a naked potato over one with some kind of additive (and OIL, BUTTER, and VINEGAR count as additives as much as salt, chives, or pepper). So now we can waffle a bit and claim that the theory didn't include the humble potato.

We win all around, eh? In my opinion, the piece Shaw is nominated for this year is even stronger than the one he won for last year. Hopefully that speaks well for his chances, unless there is a strong bias with these awards against repeat wins.

That's an interesting vision. Nice to see you back on TDG Dave. Great article. I too was fascinated by this line.

Bah. This is what I get for not being on the board for the past few weeks. Corned-Beef-less.

So where have the hundreds of millions of tons of dark meat formerly going into McNuggets been diverted to? Theories?

Lettuce/Cabbage , Radish, Green Onion, Cucumber are my favorites. I SEEN some really unusual ones, but I'm kind of a coward. I prefer my Kimchi a little bit hotter and a little less on the "fishy" side, although I certainly understand that some amount of that is always necessary.

I don't know Steve... it certainly is a puzzle, but its one I hope we can solve. I do like your distinction between "important meals" and what is usually used to review or rank restaurants. BOTH of these things need to be catalogued somehow. We all know, however, that the dividing line between fine dining and ethnic eats isn't as hard and fast as all that though. There are degrees of seperation.

I'm still a bit dubious about how you would determine "the 50 or so most important new ones". This breaks down on the lower end, and its my contention that this is where most current systems already dissapoint. While its true that I absolutely wouldn't care to see ranking or ratings of every little hamburger joint on every corner, I WOULD like to see a system that realistically included the best of them somehow. One of the major premises behind this thread, I thought, was that existing systems had no way to indicate/recognize excellence in these areas in a way which both showed their own primacy, yet simultaneously indicated their proper distance from "finer" food. And unlike the Plotnickis of the world I can't magically categorize in my head. I eat at the top, in the middle and at the bottom indiscriminately, as long as the food is good. And in fact, Steve made a very good point in that "the 2003 Zagat Guide, there is not a single ethnic restaurant in the Top 50 most popular places". That's exactly the problem with a ranking system that mixes disparate restaurant types.

(ducking) Why... you think you can talk BON into doing one?