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jbonne

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  1. jbonne

    It's Hotter Than Hell

    seconded, though with croutons!
  2. now that's a charcuterie class. the one i signed up for is about five hours. a good start, but not even as useful as a week's worth of meatmaking ...
  3. what i do wonder, with ever more talk about physiological maturation, is whether the ever-expanding realm of viticultural knowledge has extended hang time and pushed picking dates later into the season. not sure there's any empirical way to track such things, but i'd be curious whether winemakers have grown willing to let their grapes hang just that tiny bit longer, hoping that science will allow them to roll the dice and keep them from getting too cold or too wet as the season wears on. not saying that alone would hike the alcohol levels, but it might help explain part of it. as to getting a wine back down from 15 percent, as in the Argentina case, seems to be a tricky thing, no? one suggestion that emerged last weekend in a discussion of Oregon's tricky 2003 extra-ripe pinot crop, was the addition of a bit of, ahem, "very dilute acid" in the balancing process. which is not to say it helped the wine at all. my non-winemaker self is very puzzled by it all ...
  4. just curious: which charcuterie class? i know of one in Seattle at Culinary Communion. are there others?
  5. there's certainly plenty of unbalanced low-alcohol stuff out there that's showing its alcohol because there's nothing else there, or else the gasohol taste comes from plain lousy grapes. and there's some very good high-alcohol stuff that doesn't taste terribly alcoholic because it's balanced (as balanced as it can be). to that end, i don't know that i have a de facto bias against high alcohol; i just have found plenty of high-alcohol stuff that isn't pleasant to drink while i'm dining -- which isn't to say it tastes bad. it's just not food wine.
  6. incidentally, has anyone seen an issue of the new food mag put out (or at least connected to) the CIA? i'm thinking it was called "Cook and Kitchen" or similar, but it's escaping me now and Google's no help. it looked promising, along the lines of their Prochef material. but have yet to receive my first issue.
  7. the many faces of syrah alone seem to make this one impossible to answer. ditto pinot grigio/pinot gris. and in the "no accounting for taste" department, there's the matter of over-oaking viognier, an unfortunately common practice these days. we were drinking a bottle of just that last night when my co-taster looked up and said, "well, it's a nice chardonnay." i thought she was being charitable.
  8. quite agree. in the back of my head, i keep hearing a little voice saying, "Riesling and Thai, Riesling and Thai." though for acidic spice, those light Italian reds are perfect.
  9. i don't mind paying a bit extra, but it's the nickle-and-diming that gets me. better to charge me $20 extra for the year and give me a searchable Web index than do this a la carte approach. both they and Consumer Union do this with their Web sites, which seems a dubious practice for such consumer-focused publications. so does Wine Spectator, but i've simply given up and started paying for their web access.
  10. oh, i think many folks could and would argue that. the styles are readily apparent when doing a by-country comparison, with the possible exception of pinot grigio. in fact, many Old World producers are now being criticized for not devising wines that meet the New World palate. and for optimizing their wines for the often perilous realm of long-term storage, rather than short-term drinkability. hard to say, but many winemakers i've spoken with do feel this way -- especially with chameleon grapes like syrah, which can easily express both styles. this is not to say i agree with Vierra, or that there isn't a value to bold, high-alcohol wines. but i do find more and more CA wine creeping toward 17 percent and increasingly hard to pair with food. hence why i think his argument is one that's (groan) ripe for discussion.
  11. long and a touch wonky, but certainly provocative, is this screed in Wine Business Monthly. the 2-cent version: California wines have gone overboard, using uber-ripe fruit that comes off the vine at high brix and results in high-alcohol bottlings. these monster wines get great ratings from RP and WS, among others, so other wineries have tried to copy that style. now everyone's in an upward spiral toward mega-alcoholic wine. none of this is new, but the above author (George Vierra) argues that the high alcohol throws these wines out of balance and makes them "social wines," not "table wines." which i interpret as: serve 'em to get your date drunk, not to enjoy over dinner. thoughts?
  12. much appc'd for posting this link. i was looking for my old bookmark to it, now vanished into the sands of internet time. while i'm all about hyping a story, i'm sort of stunned at how clueless the KIRO report is, given that it's pretty common knowledge among food-safety types that the KC health violations have been online for years. "i, KIRO, will fight for you!!" sigh. incidentally, it's worth checking some of the highbrow and lowbrow establishments around. Dick's on Broadway for years has had a near perfect record, though their most recent inspection took a bit of a dive. (only 10 points, though.) Lark, meantime, got 73 points on their first inspection. Wild Ginger has a cumulative of 106, though the cumulative tally is a bit of a dodge, since violations can be fixed for good, or can slip. hence spot checks. (though spot checks have a gazillion shortfalls, too.) of course, i've eaten at almost every establishment atop KIRO's list.
  13. i ran into a gent in Oregon this weekend who shared a tale of running into Marcella at a book signing, or perhaps in a supermarket. (we were a lot of pinot noir down the river, so the memory is a bit hazy.) he accosted her, told her he was a huge fan, &c. so they went to the bar next door, where she promptly ordered up several Jack Daniels. not quite Gentleman Jack, but one drinks what one can find.
  14. oh, i dunno -- i find their discoveries from the test kitchen to be useful as they try new dishes. not that i don't know what to do, but i'd rather *they* waste their time cooking 30 types of mac and cheese. what really *does* annoy me about C.I. is that they're always looking for little ways to squeeze just a bit more money out of their subscribers. $X more for the web site; $Y more for an index, which is the only thing that makes the magazines useful. at this point, i'd rather just buy their books, which are at least categorized by food type. on the Saveur points mentioned above, it's more food than cooking. but i've found recipes in there that are simply wonderful. there was a recipe for halibut cheeks from Maria Sinskey a few months ago that's become one of our favorite dishes.
  15. very much the same setup, though i don't have the dedicated room. it's more a dedicated corner -- that, and having removed most wood and all solvents, cleaners, &c., from the basement. there's a bit of ventilation from outside if i want it during the warmer months, and temps don't vary much from the 60-65 range. no big spikes. a big advantage to living in Seattle. an imperfect system, but i also refuse to buy a wine i'd be devastated by if it were ruined.
  16. i've been underwhelmed. decent seafood, but entree prices are about $10 too high for the value. composition has generally been a bit underwhelming, for what amounts to a piece of fish on a plate. the clams (or were they mussels?) were very good as an app, though.
  17. quite agree, and this is one of the reasons i think YVR's selections end up a bit better rounded. not that SEA hasn't had a similar influx, and there are great true ethnic restaurants here, but there's also a tendency for legit ethnic cuisine to be transformed for the worse -- dumbed-down, that is -- for the bland American palate. in fact, i'd cite Wild Ginger as one of the worst offenders. not that their food isn't tasty -- but i can get it better seasoned, more authentically prepared and for about a third of the price simply by driving down to the International District. the only upside to this is that those of us willing to brave downtown on a weeknight, preferably after 830p, can have our pick of just about any walk-in we like. personally, i'm happy to chase out the suburbanites, though it's probably less useful for many establishments' business models. and don't forget the default expectation in U.S. restaurants of a 20 percent tip. not that i don't like tipping well -- not only for good service but also to staff whom i've come to know over repeated visits to my favorite places -- but the U.S. restaurant culture is such that servers become indignant when mediocre service isn't rewarded with 18-20 percent. and of course, having seven people hovering tends to make service thoroughly intrusive. this is why i prefer dining in Europe. it's as simple as dropping by Vivace, though i'll admit Artigiano is pretty darn good. i've never wanted for a decent cup here, or rather a decent shot, but i'm continually astounded at the abysmal quality of restaurant coffee in SEA. it might be tolerable elsewhere in the world, but in a city known for its espresso, it's NOT ACCEPTABLE for a restaurant to have second-rate espresso service -- or, as i'm increasingly finding, none at all. and while you might escape from this clause by virtue of not being an Italian restaurant, the pitiful quality of espresso at Italian establishments here is just inexcusable. i've begun to use that as a benchmark for whether the management has their act together. one notable exception, btw, is Le Pichet, which in true French bistro form, offers excellent espresso (from Cafe Vita) any time of day. they are, sadly, a rarity.
  18. jbonne

    Red currants

    dry them and put 'em in a salad. we did the latter part of this last night. make pancakes. use in a sauce with pork tenderloin/chicken breast, as suggested somewhere else in the thread, looks like. and of course: preserves.
  19. well, i go back and forth on this -- having thought at various times that either city was trumping the other in food offerings. being in SEA, i get a lot more exposure to our food than to YVR, but that's not necessarily an advantage. however, i find it reprehensible that Zagat would abandon either city. both are doing more than their fair share to uphold North American culinary standards, certainly more so than many Zagat cities.
  20. certainly understand that they halted their print editions (though Portland is odd, since it used to be joined with the Seattle book and was then separated), but i'm more puzzled about the online presence. they're still selling the hard copy of the '01-'02 Vancouver book, but they've pulled the online ratings. so does this mean they're willing to sell people outdated reviews in print, but not online? btw, the Portland listings are still online, though i dunno how outdated those are. so they're not being quite consistent with de-listing discontinued markets. generally, i keep seeing an ever more troubling pattern of behavior by Zagat. they seem to have overextended themselves during the publishing boom you described and now they're getting more and more stingy. at least they've cut back on the pop-ups that were pervading their site. i've essentially gone completely online with them and stopped buying their hard-copy guides, though i still get a free copy of Seattle for my contributions. so i wouldn't save the $10 by not buying a hard copy of the (now outdated) YVR book. it never made sense to me to buy a guide for two nights of dining. -- incidentally, we checked your magazine's food edition and found it quite helpful. and we'll just have to keep an eye out for the Okanagan Springs Helles while we're up there in a few weeks.
  21. while planning a trip up to YVR a few weeks from now, scouting around for new restaurant ideas, i headed over to the Zagat.com site. while i've used, and appreciated, the Zagat reviews for Vancouver in the past, i suddenly discovered they had completely disappeared from the site. this seemed odd, since i know they'd been there before and they were still selling the hard copy of the '01-'02 version. so i e-mailed them. here's their response: surely, they weren't saying that Vancouver was not one of those cities "that have vibrant and evolving restaurant scenes"?? if that's the case, i'd expect my adopted hometown of Seattle to vanish before Vancouver, to say nothing of St. Louis, Utah or Detroit. so what's afoot here? i suspect they're not making as much money as they'd hoped off the Canadian market, though Toronto still remains. even so, it strikes me as bizarre they would turn their back on as foodie a town as Vancouver. anyone else find this a tad bizarre?
  22. seconded on Zoe and Matt's. both excellent. Matt's will require reservations, big time. Zoe has accomodated me on walk-in every time, even a Friday night. it's certainly worth doing Rovers, Campagne, Canlis, Herbfarm just to see what Seattle offers in that range. but my feeling is ... branch out. Cascadia is an excellent displayer of regional talent. i think Kerry Sear is brilliant, though some disagree. (though i'm rather done with the Douglas fir sorbet.) going slightly more populist, lunch at Salumi or at many places in the International District are worthy stops, if that's your thing. Pichet is lovely but not a Seattle-specific treat, save the wine list, which is a blast. i'd generally say to skip most of the big-name seafood places. especially Ray's. after parsing their wine list last week, i'm on a semi-boycott. 150% over retail is simply unacceptable, even for the unsuspecting tourist. but the one place no friend of mine can leave Seattle without dining is Palace Kitchen. it's not without its shortcomings, but i maintain it's one of the best restaurants i've ever seen for food-focused foodies, and a true symbol of Seattle dining. generally, you can skip Tom Douglas' other offerings, though i haven't been to Lola. (but i hear great things.) still haven't been to Lark or Lampreia. i suck.
  23. absolutely. and they're more likely to tell you exactly what's freshest and how long various things have been sitting in the store. though of course, Seattlites are very spoiled when it comes to freshness, at least comparatively ...
  24. one presumably apocryphal theory i heard last week is that the plumping up is in fact due to an extra amount of beef lungs in Ballpark's franks. when the capillaries heat up, air expands, &c. like i said, presumably apocryphal. but made me smile anyway.
  25. while we're on the topic ... filets versus whole sides? (i'm leaving steaks out entirely.) it was pointed out to me recently that even if you deduct the weight of bones and trim, the whole-fish prices for salmon in Seattle are almost always less than half the filet price -- and any decent fishmonger will do the filet (and even the pin-boning, though they won't often mention that) for free. the only downside: you have to buy a whole fish. but if you happen to be serving more than a couple people, this seems like a really good way to get salmon for a good deal less, and of course you're able to inspect the fish for freshness and damage before you end up with your cuts. (plus you get the bones for stock, or to taunt your cats.) so what's anyone else think?
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