Chris Amirault

It was almost exactly two years ago, early November 2007. Thanks in advance.

It's a good point, not a crappy one. No hack you.

When we went to Alinea a couple of years ago, we were given a champagne cocktail to start the evening. It was Does anyone know the recipe? I believe it had dashes of Campari, Benedictine... and... um....

Two years later: any updates?

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply you were on the "crap" side of the fence. Having said that, I think that a lot of people believe that a well-made Manhattan is crap, and those people tend to be the ones waving twenties at bartenders across the land. Now, if that Manhattan were on a sub list of "classic cocktails" across the page from the -tinis, maybe that person would consider it, or his/her date would, and the adjective would mark the difference. I dunno.

I think that nomenclature is about more than PR. It's also about education. I spent several hours talking to bartenders at a cocktail competition Tuesday night, and their notion of "good cocktail" is very different from Toby's notion of good cocktail. My brief attempt to champion the basic concept of balance, for example, threw several of the competitors for a loop, because in their work they steadfastly believe that overly sweet drinks are in fact balanced, and they've got customers to prove it. Perhaps "classical" or "classic" carries connotations that are wrong in cases such as those Kohai cites. But I have a lot of conversations with people who think "PDT" refers to a time zone and maraschino is a bright red cherry. Using the term "classic" and referencing those principles enables me to mark a distinction that most people -- drinkers and bartenders both -- don't even know exists. And I certainly can't initiate productive conversations by calling bartenders hacks and telling them they're making (and their customers are drinking) crap.

As I've had a bunch of great meals there, I'll be happy to talk to the guy and tell him how much I appreciate his kitchen work.

Bumpity-bump. Any updates?

Any new possibilities around the convention center? I'll be there for a week in November and, save for at least one meal at Zaytinya, I haven't any clear plans. Recommend, please.

Heading back in a few weeks and can't believe that no one has posted since that last post above. Anything to get? To avoid?

There are lots of books and websites with those conversions. I think that the point is, rather, that the lack of weighted measurements indicates a missed opportunity, one we've been discussing here.

KitKat makes a Halloween mini-bar out of "white" "chocolate" that is neither chocolate nor white: it's the color of your vomit after you've eaten too much orange sherbet. Tastes a bit that way, too. Scary stuff.

I agree completely with Mike: There are plenty of chefs who run high-quality restaurants and turn out coffee-table clunkers, and perhaps Thompson is someone who has a snazzy, unserious restaurant but managed to write one of the handful of essential cookbooks published in the last decade. Doesn't matter a bit to me: Thai Food set such a high bar because of Thompson's commitment to treating Thai food with the seriousness it deserves, and it'd be disappointing if this book doesn't approach that very high bar.

Something I want to do more of, too. As my daughter might say, we are totally so not their usual customers.

Last night Michael Dietsch (Society member dietsch), an MS Walker employee named Avery, and I were the three judges for the Don Q rum event. Twelve bartenders made two different drinks in three glasses using Don Q Cristal (their white rum) and three flavored rums (coconut, mojito, and lemon). The contestants worked in teams of four, meaning that the judges got three rounds of eight (!!) drinks all at once. The secret ingredient was lemon verbena, which only one or two of the contestants had heard of prior to the event. The drinks themselves ran the gamut from complete misses to somewhat workable variations on rum sours. The contestants were enthusiastic and worked their butts of under non-ideal conditions, and it's clear that my statement prior to the start of the competition ("Number one for me is balance, and an overly sweet drink is unbalanced") caused some concerns; I think we got fewer blasts of Sprite in the mixing tins than we otherwise would have gotten. It's clear that these professionals are used to making big, sweet drinks while in the weeds at an understaffed bar. A few used jiggers to measure but most free-poured, and the inconsistencies among our three glasses suggests that most of what little accuracy is left when you free pour went out the window with the frenzy of the competition. We used the score sheets aligned to the rules linked to above, so no surprises there. I think that the three of us managed our palate fatigue pretty well, but at the expense of the temperature and dilution of the drinks. The last was a particularly bad problem: when the host said, "Start!" about half of the contestants scooped wet ice out of the bin that had been sitting there for 45 minutes and dropped it into their mixing glasses, then spent four or five minutes grabbing stuff, running around, and adding to their glasses while the ice melted. I don't think a single drink had a dilution near 25%, and most were well over 50%. Frozen drinks were disasters. Since I'm going to be judging future sessions, including the final, I spent a lot of time talking to the contestants to learn where they worked, what they were aiming for, how they approached their drinks. It was clear that, whatever their competitive spirit, most hadn't been asked questions by someone assuming that they were a bartending professional, and appreciated the opportunity to talk, even if they were surprised. The host had provided a wide range of ingredients, both fresh and bottled, and many were new to the contestants; no one, I think, had heard of Maraschino, and several had their first taste of St. Germain, absinthe, Canton, and tequila anejo. On the ride back, Michael and I started thinking about changes that could be made to the contest to improve the experience for judges and contestants, as well as promote quality cocktail making in this non-ideal setting. (Middle of the casino floor, surrounded by slot-playing zombies drinking vodka rocks and Jack & Cokes, all suffused with cigarette smoke thanks to a state exemption.) Here's what we came up with: Stagger the contestants like the time trials at cycling races for drink one and then reverse it for drink two: one contestant goes up and makes his/her drink, then 5 min later the next goes up, and so on. Order it like so: 1, 2, 3, ... 11, 12 then switch back 12, 11, 10, ... 3, 2, 1. It would produce a lot of beneficial effects. You encourage contestants to watch and talk to their competitors so as not to repeat ideas and to learn about the drinks. (This is particularly important next week as one of the mandatory ingredients is Castries, and I'm worried about getting 18 variations on the "Peanut Butter and Jelly Castrini.") In addition, judges get drinks served cold, and no one is penalized by having their drinks sit for 20 minutes. Finally, judges can discuss the drinks more freely and taste them without being rushed. Improve ice handling. Have several bins of ice put into a deep freeze 1-2 hrs prior to the event, and have runners or barbacks bring a batch of ice out for each contestant. (There were about a dozen Twin Rivers employees running around.) The ice should go into small coolers at the stations. Finally, the contestants should be told to keep their ice in the bin until they're building, shaking, or stirring their drinks. Sheesh. Introduce the secret ingredient to contestants in the pre-event reception to give them some familiarity and teach them how to think about it. Until I brought out the two verbena plants, which were hidden under the platform, no one even had thought about the verbena, and only a few bothered to go through the basics (soft press, light muddle, rough muddle, chew) to see how it worked in different applications. Provide compelling additional ingredients ahead of time. Given the products last night (and next week: Castries and Chairman's Reserve aged rum), I'm pushing for more classic tiki ingredients such as falernum, Angostura, Herbsaint, passion fruit, ginger, pimento dram, etc. Hold a tasting of the main ingredients in the pre-event reception, giving an opportunity to familiarize contestants with the products but also to teach them about tasting itself. Make a "competitor's drink," one extra drink for the other contestants to straw taste. That way, as the contestants move off the judges' table, they can continue to talk about what they did and why they did it. Create small judging result cards that say "The drink's strengths are..." and "Work on..." that would allow the judges to give feedback to the contestants beyond scores. They could be anonymous (or not). Again, given their efforts, it would be great to be able to talk with a bartender about their drink in a more relaxed, considered manner, and to give them more feedback than an aggregate score. Some of these strategies wouldn't work for, say, a cocktail contest with teams from Mayahuel, Velvet Hour, Teardrop Lounge, etc. -- some would be insulting, frankly; the idea that I have something to teach Phil Ward, Toby Maloney, or Daniel Shoemaker is a joke. However, in our biggest little state, where barkeeps devote hours each night to freepouring flavored vodka over rocks while shooting cranberry juice and Sprite out of the gun, I think that they'd make a lot of sense.

I think that lemons and limes have different coatings on them. I was able to wipe off the lemons if I (1) gave them a 10-sec bath in boiling water; (2) dropped them immediately wet into my hand and (3) vigorously paper toweled the wax off. The limes were much more resistant. FWIW, those lacking asbestos hands would do well to wear gloves of some sort while doing this activity. I'm pretty hardy myself, but after a dozen: yee-owch.

Gael Greene is sharing a letter from Marion Cunningham's family that the cookbook author and CA food writer is nearing death. From Greene's website: I thought that Society members might want to share their memories of Cunningham and her work.

So, let's see.... The dishwasher was delivered at 7:58a -- before the 8-10a window! -- and our handyman installed it pretty easily. The insulation around the machine didn't fit into the space, unfortunately, so it had to be discarded. More annoyingly, the installation instructions specify a connector that has to be purchased separately from a Whirlpool shop, which took an extra hour to track down. But that's all behind us now, and the new machine is in and working. So far, it's a beaut. I keep joking with my wife that the pans, glasses, and dishes all have a strange sparkly quality to them. I've taken a few photographs of the machine itself and will post shortly. But right now we're happy clams.

I heard once that the sheets were rolled out in pairs, and that, when pulled apart, the dull sides were on the interior. True?

Larry David got busted for napkin theft last night on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," so anything's possible.

Thanks for that feedback, Philip, which I'm sharing with the organizer. I'll know more about this contest after Tuesday night, and will weigh in on these items when I'm back. Based on last year's video and this year's rules and judging criteria, I think that the competition is moving away from entertainment and toward quality cocktails; I certainly have no chops in judging a flair bartending competition.

Over in the mushroom powder topic, I mentioned that those little silicon packets were useful to stick in jars of the powder to keep it dry. You know the ones I mean: they come in instant noodle packages and with other foods that are susceptible to getting soggy. They have a lot of uses around my kitchen; most recently, I stuck one in a container of smoked coconut powder. The other item I hoard -- and, indeed, often pilfer from the produce section of the grocery store -- are asparagus elastics. I don't know why, but those little purple buggers are the best elastics I've ever seen. I use them to wrap up opened packages of corn meal, bacon, you name it. Surely there are others repurposing these sorts of objects out there. And if you're a bit obsessive about it, we'll just call you an uber-recycler or something.

Those little silicon packets that soak up moisture are great to stick in those little jars, I've found.

The brisket was a bit sour to my palate, though no one else noticed it. Has anyone here had that issue?

Sunkist just restarted stamping their lemons around here. ETA: The stickers are on them, too, btw. Sigh.