Chris Amirault

Welcome, Derek, to eGullet! She's right. You're completely off your rocker, man. By the way, I find that scrambled eggs cooked in lots of European butter in which you've sauteed some garlic aren't as good as they should be. I find that adding a 1/2 cup of chunk lobster meat just before the eggs really helps make that dish sufficiently rich. Ahem.

Check out the article in today's Providence Journal.

In our house, this sort of "math" is known as the Calvin Trillin theorem. Basically, Trillin would go to his wife, Alice, and describe his desires to go on, say, a four-week eating tour of Singapore. After some planning and costing it out, they would decide that they couldn't afford to spend that several thousands on a trip -- and thus had "saved" themselves that amount, which could now be freely spent elsewhere.

Michael, your regular mentioning of Katz's pastrami blackens my mood temporarily and makes me wish I were you!

I just merged the newest version of this regularly repeating thread into an old chestnut with lots of useful information. I'll also point you toward the excellent knife maintenance and sharpening eGCI course and the related Q&A from that course, both of which have excellent information about knife choices.

I can't find anything on Google to bear this out, so I offer only my rock-solid anecdotal evidence and the testimonial of chile-heads worldwide when I say that I get a buzz off of very hot peppers. I can be convinced that it's capiscum, or that it's my happiness in having my mouth afire, or both. Anyone know?

Mint chutney.

Scallop: "a" as in "awe," or "a" as in "hat"?

I think that "Oozing Meatwad" deserves to be enshrined forever in RecipeGullet!

What did your friend say in response?

Whoa, Nelly.... Let's just take this back down a notch. Remember that this thread is about responses to the article discussing diet sodas and weight loss/gain. Let's stick to the topic and keep personal attacks out of the discussion. And, yes, Octaveman, it is entirely possible for me to fail to see the very same points that are utterly obvious to you! Like The Food Tutor, I am quite regularly able to be quite thoroughly wrong!

Susan, we need a shot of where the hole is (or was!) in the burgers! I'm fascinated by this little trick....

I think that the association of drinking diet soda with lots of junk food makes sense to me. However, I rarely eat junk food, yet often have one or two servings of Diet Coke throughout the day (especially if I'm cooking and crave a beer!). What therefore is useful (and, at least to me, counterintuitive) about this study is that the soda makes me have more cravings, not fewer.... Sounds like good ol' agua pura -- and of course coffee and tea -- are the solution.

Yep, just like the thread title says: a new study conducted over eight years asserts that diet sodas help you gain rather than lose weight. Click for the WebMD study. As an admitted regular consumer of Diet Coke, I'm quite stunned by this news. More iced coffee in my life, I guess! Are there other diet soda drinkers out there who are floored by this?

What kinds of buns are people using for their burgers? I find that most good bread rolls don't make good buns, only because a bite tends to be more toothy than the burger contraption can handle....

eBay always has a jillion character cakepans on sale; I'd bet you'd find a Batman one pronto....

I think you mean, "I have an healthy yet extremely refined jelly bean aesthetic," right? At least, that's my impression.

Great thread. What about mixing up your bibimbap? Just go right at it? Should you put the gochuchang/rice vinegar mixture on before mixing or after? Also, while we're being polite, what is the proper way to say, "Thank you"?

While I'm not sure I get the Caesar salad (anchovies and garlic, eh? ), I really agree with the scallops. There's something very sexy, I think, about a seared scallop....

Six Time/Life Foods of the World volumes at a garage sale this past weekend.

For my first wife, I made red beans and rice. For my partner, Andrea, I chose something less flatulent and more phallic: veal tenderloins. Draw your own conclusions.

Please, kind sir, be a trailblazer and attempt this concoction your own self! Document it well!

Do like Chef Champe says and get thee to Persimmon (click here for a detailed report). You will not be disappointed, friend.

We went to Persimmon last night for my birthday dinner. Spoiler alert: this post is an absolute rave. I seriously think that every restauranteur in Providence should be a bit worried that traffic down Route 114 is going to increase in the coming months, thanks to Chef Champe Speidel's (a.k.a., speidec's) fantastic new place. I'll start by saying that I called to get reservations for two PLUS an infant at about 7 pm on a busy Saturday night. I know full well that adding a couple late in the evening, particularly a couple with an infant, can be a pain in the ass: who knows whether they'll order a full meal with wine and when they'll actually clear the table, right? But Lisa, who runs the front (and is Champe's fiancé), made a reservation for us at 8:30 -- and this all happened before I mentioned I was an eGulleteer! This treatment continued once we arrived and throughout the night. We were given a table for four so that we had room for Bebe and her diaper bag. Even though Andrea had to breastfeed Bebe twice while we were there, the staff was friendly, supportive, and discreet all evening long. (If you have a little kid and like fine dining, you know that this sort of treatment is extremely rare in non-"family" restaurants.) The amuse was a black sea bass sashimi with cucumber liquor and cilantro, a fine start save for a single fish scale. The menu, featuring seasonal contemporary American cuisine, was headlining peas and fava beans front and center, and they surrounded three seared giant scallops, which were sweetened by chunks of an amazing, smoky bacon. We also had a beet salad that was, hands down, the best of many, many beet salads that have passed my lips, featuring a marvelously runny goat cheese from Farmstead Cheese Shop in Providence. We each had two luscious kumamoto oysters in their briny liquor made just slightly bitter by a few drops of Campari. The summer mixer brought out the sweetness of the oysters in a way that a mignonette simply cannot. Our spring friends then made another appearance in a luxurious pea soup, poured at table around a citrus (not sure if it was yuzu, lime, or lemon, or a combination) sorbet, morels, and a few more fava beans. These dishes were simply perfect and perfectly simple, each a combination of fresh, assertive flavors seeking not to be clever but to be right, to be good. We cleansed with a spoonful of blood orange sorbet (splendid) in preparation for our main courses: a subtle bow-tie carbonara with that haunting bacon and still more peas (you can see we were a bit silly about the arrival of those early summer pearls) and a BBQ chicken dish, which we found to be good but not up to the standards of the rest of the dishes. Indeed, the sauce for the excellent thigh and breast meat couldn't hold a candle next to the sharp slaw tossed atop outstanding fingerling potatoes. Thoughout the evening, the preparation was perfect and the presentation was perfect. We drank glasses off the strong and very reasonable wine list all night: two glasses of a solid 2003 Viognier by Smoking Loon and one outstanding Rock Rabbit 2003 Syrah. Had we not been preparing for a father's day blowout tomorrow, we would have had dessert as well; the ice cream, gelato, and sorbet sampler seemed a good bet, and the cheese plate (remember, from Farmstead Cheese) looked amazing. Lisa checked in on us regularly throughout the night, chatting about Chef Champe's eGullet obsession and the first few weeks of business. We were surrounded by happy tables, among them many folks who, like us, made the trip down from Providence to show their allegiance to the former chef at Gracie's or simply due to the growing buzz. Indeed, it's probably best to think of Persimmon as a high-end family place. The servers work well as a friendly, attentive team; the space is intimate and calmly designed; Lisa and Chef Champe are sensitive to the flow of the room and the experience of each table. Finally, the restaurant is quite remarkably inexpensive considering the food; honestly, if they were to raise prices 20%, the final bill would make a whole lot more sense to this diner. We left thinking that we had finally found our replacement for Empire, where we had been regulars until the place collapsed, sadly, a while back. Unlike Empire, which sat across from Trinity Rep Theatre, Persimmon is just off Hope Street in downtown Bristol, a fifteen-to-twenty minute drive (depending on how brazen you feel as you negotiate the several speed traps) down 114 from I-195. I know that a homey feeling place that is good about kids isn't likely to get you to make that drive, but I'm here to tell you: just six weeks into its existence, this is one of the best places to eat in the greater Providence area already, and the sky is the limit.