Chris Amirault

Of course: I'm sure many among us are willing to pay more at farmers' markets. I am, certainly. But the key here is the "pay more" part. The extra cash leaving my pocket ain't riding a unicorn.

The estimable Barry Estabrook over at the Atlantic has a piece up titled "The Farmers' Market Myth," seeking to debunk the idea that farmers' markets charge more than grocers: Call me skeptical -- and let me issue a challenge. Shall we all devote some time as the farmers' markets get going to seeking to figure out what's myth and what's reality? I pay pretty close attention to my grocery bill, and I cannot think of a single item, be it produce, meat, dairy, whatever, that is less expensive at the farmers' market I frequent. Anyone with me?

Well, since you're not trying to get it to a final temp (60C iirc), then you're making decisions about flavor only. Why not smoke 'em for a few hours, record it, and then see what you think later on? How will you finish cooking the bellies, btw? If you have a SV rig, that works wonders.

Those really are astonishingly bad looking drinks.

Well, if you've had a Snake River Farms strip steak, you might change your mind.

So Williams-Sonoma just hung up a virtual butcher shop shingle. Pretty impressive line-up: Pat LaFrieda, Double R Ranch, Snake River Farms, etc. It seems keyed to US Father's Day BBQ and grilling gift-making. I can't quite figure out how delivery is factored into the price and whether it's worth paying W-S as a middleman or not. Has anyone tried this out?

I've found that the people at EdgePro themselves are great to deal with. I'd contact them and see if you can arrange something. Website here.

Ditto for mine. I had two very different shades of pink from those two tenderloins.

Two kids, my dad, and me: I'm already freaking out about this road trip coming on the weekend, which features a big trip to the Museum of Natural History. Thoughts on food within the area midday? If you say "Shake Shack," give me a rough wait time.

I've always wanted to be able to give my coffee/chocolate fiending wife a dark chocolate espresso bean bark.

Thanks, EatNopales! I know that we US Anglos have little access to the rich culture and traditions of regional Mexican cuisines, and I really appreciate your post about the CONACULTA culinary projects and specifically the information about this region of Jalisco. Can you say a bit more about what is provided by butchers, (super)markets, farmers, etc.? What's a typical shopping excursion like? How often? To buy what? What is the scalded milk fat? What's the phrase in Spanish for that? (ETA: Ooops: what SylviaLovegren said!) How is the flank steak prepared? I'll stop there but I have lots more questions to come!

Doubling quantity doesn't really have an effect once you've brought the poaching liquid to temperature, does it? Thickness, on the other hand....

Thanks for all that, everyone! I'm hoping to visit the bar later this week and will report back.

Thanks -- that completely makes sense, given that curing is also a dessiccation process. Be bold! As you can see, there are plenty of people around ready to lend a hand!

Can I get an update on housing options? I haven't done boo about that yet, but it seems that we're getting close to the time when I should.

Well, as an enthusiast who's just spent a good chunk of the last 18 months thinking about these issues as I helped to start the bar at a local restaurant, I'll share my thoughts, which can be summed by saying, "It's extremely difficult to pull this off." So, in addition to the good advice here -- and I think that all of it is good advice thus far, especially Lisa's -- I'd add the following: Develop your business plan around the specific customers you wish to bring into the bar: locals after work; ex-pats; tourists; industry; whatever. At our bar, which focuses on craft or classic cocktails, we break down the customer base into "conservative" ("I want what I want"), "interested," and "experimental," and we make sure that we have drinks for each segment on our menus. Obviously, you need a reliable way to calculate costs per drink. I saw that $4/cocktail price and thought, "Egad." I don't know what booze costs in Manila, and I realize that some things like labor are far cheaper than in the US, but... wow. That's not much. If you have any interest in quality drinks, recognize that HR and training are by far the two most important aspects of the plan. How will you hire? What requirements will you have -- including at least a few performances of typical service situations -- for new employees? What training will they receive, at first and on-going? What will you do when these great new employees leave and you have to replace them or give them better pay and/or benefits? Develop clear job descriptions, service manuals, comp/VIP policies, inventory and cash in/out protocols; use them rigorously and transparently; and fire the first set of people who want to see if you're serious and try to screw around with your rules. Support staffing behind the bar is big, too. Will you overstaff with bar backs etc. to insure quality service? The supply chain challenges noted above are critical, which may mean that upfront capital needs to be spent on creating a solid reserve of hard-to-find products that you will use to build your brand and that you'll have on hand even if the supply dries up. We bought two cases of Rittenhouse BIB rye to this end before the bar opened up. Bar design is a huge issue. We have a few topics around here discussing it. Most people who design bars have never worked behind them and have no clue what they're doing, including the vast majority of restaurant interior designers and architects. For this reason, it's a really good idea to talk to every single bartender you see about the design piece. No matter if they're throwing shots down the stick or mixing cutting-edge stuff, they'll have strong opinions about bar design. Ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. Ice. If money's no object, buy three Kold-Draft machines and hire a full-time technician to repair them when they all break at once at 7:30 pm on a Saturday night. Start staging at the sorts of bars that follow a business plan roughly like the one you're seeking to create. Think hard about whether you want to prepare food on the premises. Or, put differently, think hard about whether you want to finance and manage one (a bar) or two (a bar and a kitchen) distinct, conflicting, and complicated economies, societies, sets of equipment, staffs, and cultures. If you're used to sitting on your job and are over 30, start developing your leg muscles and find some comfy shoes. "A lounge with good drinks, mostly classic cocktails at a reasonable price point" doesn't, to me, sound like a workable concept, especially when it comes to marketing/PR. What's the draw? The elevator sentence? If I'm out with friends and have two hours and a stack of bills to spend, what's going to draw me there? Become a POS god, or hire one. Develop a system for your cocktail recipes that is easy to access while behind the bar but can be revised as needed. This is a big sticking point at C&B; the rolodex is a disaster and we're struggling to find a workable technological solution that doesn't cost a bundle. If I were you, I'd make a mental commitment to at least a five year plan: 2 to get it up and running, one year of 70-hour weeks getting it going, one year of 60-hour weeks ironing out the kinks, and the last year of 50-hour weeks training your management team to take over. Finally, jettison the idea that being a home enthusiast teaches you anything at all about this business. Best that you enter this thinking that you know nothing, because, if you're at all like I was (and you seem to be), you know nothing. The restaurant and bar industry is a transient, complex industry that has little in common with the world of finance in terms of money, staff, pay rates, benefits, hours, problems, and so on. In addition, there's a lot of hanky-panky floating around the world of booze, and you'll have to learn what it is and how to deal with it. Sounds like Manila has an additional layer of intrigue that even we here in Providence don't have to face. I had worked here and there in the industry at different moments in my adult life prior to starting at Cook & Brown, and the time I spent working in fast food chains, at an Indian restaurant, and so on were far more important experience than my hours at home perfecting my homemade bitters. If you can't get that experience in the next short while, preferably in Manila (all industry culture is profoundly local), then you'd better hire a consultant who has it. No matter what you do, remember: You. Know. Nothing. That'll give you the conceptual room to learn all that you're going to learn to succeed. Despise this pessimism, I certainly join those here who wish you the best. It's a tough row to hoe, but it can be a very rewarding experience if you're up for it!

I find it to be significantly more rich and complex. I should say that I've never had any quality piloncillo besides this one....

Yeah, I was wondering about that, too.

Made and served the meal based on most of the MC items I mentioned above. I had to adjust a few things at the last minute for a variety of dietary and other reasons; the resulting menu was: asparagus royale (4-94) with shaved blackstrap ham juniper brined pork tenderloin (5-36) wrapped in pancetta sweet potato fondant (4-39) salted apple caramel purée (5-20) fried ras al hanout parsnip chips brown butter fiddleheads (Oh, and dessert was Pierre Hermé's dark caramel & dark chocolate mousse, which was remarkable.) Mostly successes, but some notes on technique and other adjustments. Forgive the mediocre photos. The project I wanted to document most closely was the pancetta-wrapped pork tenderloin. I had to substitute a few things in the brine, and the additions (anise and sassafras especially) worked very well; I will use that base recipe again for sure. I also made three packages from the two tenderloins: two from the thick end of the tenderloins and one built by splitting the tapering tail ends and rolling them into one evenly shaped cylinder, the interior of which had been dusted with Activa. That worked perfectly. The pancetta wrapping also worked well, though it didn't adhere as well as, say, the chicken skin in the fried chicken recipe. Here's the prep. The thinly sliced pancetta laid out slightly overlapping along each edge: Dusted with Activa: Tenderloin atop: Wrapped with underlying plastic wrap: I let that sit in the fridge overnight, cooked it SV to 60C, then chilled it yesterday. Today I brought it to room temp and seared it in some grapeseed oil to crisp up the pancetta. Had to be careful because the pancetta was not entirely stuck to the tenderloin, but with some gentle turning in the pan, it turned out fine: Meanwhile, after a bit of puzzlement yesterday, I figured out the best way to poke the plugs of sweet potato out of the cookie cutter: thank you, Jura scotch bottle! Here's the plated royale (still in the ramekin because I couldn't get 'em out) with blanched tips, the ham, and a couple of small pieces of pickled long-stemmed artichoke stem (cooked SV at 85C for 90m or so, peeled, then vacuum-sealed in a lemon/olive oil vinaigrette) for acid: The royales were great, though a touch too salty due to my using a salted stock from the freezer but not adjusting the salt in the recipe. I didn't have any porcini oil, so I bumped up the roasted hazelnut oil to good effect. Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to introduce some crunch to either course given the dietary restrictions, and I came up with the fried parsnips with ras al hanout. These were inhaled: Here's the finished plate for the tenderloin (a plate whose use was required by the holiday -- a gift from mom): The overall dish was a bit sweet for one person's taste (my fault, if it is in fact true), but, well, same reactions as in the past for most items: best tenderloin ever, best sweet potato ever, etc. That will now be my go-to recipe for sweet potatoes and pork tenderloin, and the apple caramel sauce was outstanding, too. One note about portions. I bumped up the portions on the royales and the tenderloin, which was a mistake. As with so much of the food in the MC book, these were very flavorful, rich dishes that benefitted from smaller serving size.

There's only one!

By "kids," you mean my two shopping assistants/trainees, one in search of Noilly Prat dry 375 ml bottles and the other scanning the rye section for new items while I ask the manager if there's any good pisco on the way?

Did you use the three day brine? I have some boneless short ribs nearly ready for today and was surprised that the brining is cut in half for the boneless meat (down from six days).

I do this all the time, and am currently doing it for Mother's Day for a mom who's still recovering from abdominal surgery. I got a short list of what she can eat and a longer list of what she can't; on-going discussion and results over here. I can say that we're all looking forward to the meail. As for motivation, I certainly embrace the idea that someone struggling with profound changes in routine and comfort can have the ability to enjoy something simple and pleasurable that I've made. I suspect I also appreciate the ability to do something at all in situations that prevent me from feeling just this side of useless. After all, disruptions to routine and comfort are hardly the only difficulties the sick and dying are facing, and unlike, say, Dr. Beal, I've got few non-food tools to help with those other disruptions.

I should have clarified above: I've been asked to develop a small number of original drinks for the event, and those will be what I'm serving. Someone else will be handling wine and/or beer, etc.

Yes, definitely thinking about making bottled drinks and/or a punch, no more than three drinks, I think. I'm pretty sure that someone else will be pouring beers and wines -- note to self: check that. What is this gigantic shaker of which you speak? Actually, now that you mention it, I wonder if I still have that 24" glass.... That's likely, and I'll know more in a bit if it is a sure thing. Word.