Chris Amirault

Those who have opinions about such things, what should I have done? Don't post anything. Post that Ted made me a great scotch drink. Post that Ted made me a drink with Talisker, Fernet Branca, Cinzano rosso, and Mathilde Orange XO. Post what I posted. Post what I posted with Ted's last name. Finally, should I have gotten Ted's permission to do any of these things? I didn't -- though he knew about eGullet and saw I was writing down the ingredients as he responded to my detailed questions. The bartender in question to whom the many Scotland the Brave fans owe a debt is named Ted Kilpatrick.

I wish I had a lot of encouraging information to share. There are some great cities for food trucks, and there are some great individual food trucks in certain cities. But I think it's a tough row to hoe. From information I've gathered from friends and acquaintances who have gone or tried to go this route, it's all about dealing with location, location, location, both for production in a certified food prep facility and for sales. It's also about the most picayune local matters involving who "owns" what side of which street, which councilman's pocket got lined by whom, and more. Months spent returning to some licensing office only to be told to go to another and then back again seemsto be the norm. Margins are a lot tighter with most carts: outside of Portland, Austin, and a few other places customers are unlikely to venture through the rain, snow, sleet, and/or hail to stand in a line (not sit in the front of your house) and wait for some felafel that will be cold in two minutes. That means you have to be very canny about what you can carry over from week to week, what can and can't be made a la minute, all that stuff. Staffing has been a big issue for some people I know, particularly if the owner isn't driving out the truck, cooking the food, and collecting the cash. Ditto the truck itself, which isn't just a rolling cramped kitchen with sketchy generators and propane tanks. When you have a restaurant, everyone knows where it is, and the restaurant doesn't have to move to get there. Not a food truck: if it ain't moving, you ain't selling. Finally, because the truck business is so cut-throat, I've been told that there's not a lot of inter-business cooperation to help out the newbies. While I'm no expert, I wrote a bit about Providence food trucks last year in Edible Rhody magazine. The most successful "truck," Johnny's , is not a truck at all but a trailer that's edged diagonally into a slot between two buildings. On the other hand, over half of the other trucks -- the genuinely mobile ones -- are now gone. I would only start a food truck if that very first bite, the one you take as you step away from the truck, is a mindblowing bite of food that you can't get anywhere else. If you can't deliver that, you're begging the customer to ask themselves why they stood in line outside to eat with their bare hands in the first place.

There are lots of rules and regs here in the US concerning what music can and cannot be played over a restaurant sound system. At the restaurant where I work, we have certified Pandora accounts at our place, and as I usually control the music from behind the bar. I've read in a few times that some kids think of jazz as "restaurant music," and I can certainly understand why. We often work through 1920s-1960s jazz and standards -- Ellington, Coltrane, Fitzgerald, and so on -- for most of service. Toward the end of the night, you might hear Tito Puente to brighten things up or, needing the opposite, Massive Attack or alternative klezmer music. That is to say, choices are made based on what we can legitimately use, what we staff like, and what we think the general vibe of the place is. It's always inoffensive, at least by intention: once, "Chocolate Salty Balls" crept into a Pandora station that noticed Isaac Hayes but not the South Park content. When a smirking customer pointed this out, I quickly queued up "A-Tisket, A-Tasket." I guess people really listen to that background music sometimes.... Interesting piece in the NY Times about this a few years back, prompted, I think, by the backlash/embrace of Mario Batali's decision to play Led Zeppelin at Babbo.

Very interested in your report back!

I'm one of 'em. Celiac = no fun. I don't miss beer, and I mostly don't miss bread, but I really do miss Chinatown dives. Right -- there are a lot of people dealing with celiac disease out there. What makes me shake my head is that 1 out of 4 US adults avoid gluten. With celiac disease prevalence at less than 1% of healthy adults, it would seem that the other 24% are the same folks who were "allergic" to MSG or who swore off bread back in the Atkins days.

No other details about location? Surely they must have a space leased or bought in late Sept....

That's similar to a drink our bar manager, Hannah Kirshner, created that's on our menu as Green Velvet: 2 oz Henry McKenna (or Bulleit) 1 oz Cherry Heering 2 dashes Fee's OF bitters

I bought a few bell peppers today, and I realized that I selected them for the opposite reasons mentioned above: I go for lighter weight, not heavier weight, because I don't want to pay for the ribs and seeds inside. Since I always dice or mince them, I also look for long, straight bells as opposed to ones with lots of curves.

Ah. Gotcha. So you're basically building a salamander with coals.

Why not just do it on top of the chimney? Heat rising, all that.

Terrific idea from Alton Brown about using the chimney charcoal starter as a high-heat grill. (Click here for the Amazon link, including pix, of a chimney charcoal starter.) I would imagine that it would be very effective for browning SV-ed meat quickly -- and a lot hotter than doing so after you've dumped the hot coals into your Weber kettle, as I have done a few times.

Wow. Brilliant. This would be a great idea for a variety of meats prepared sous vide....

The Guardian just published its list of the best 50 foods in the world, and they also declare where one must eat them. It's a pretty fun list, and I can claim a mere three for myself: pastrami at Katz's, macarons at Ladurré, cake at Pierre Hermé. You?

No such thing as bad pub, either.

Me, too. Then I saw that the shrimp I was buying for ~$10-12/lb was up to $18/lb.

John, I started with that one a long while back and ended up with the recipe to which I linked in the post above. I think that the "throw it in a blender and serve" was a crack about how simple hot sauces are to make, but it definitely doesn't apply to that particular, cooked sauce, imo.

Any updates? Gulf shrimp seem to be skyrocketing in price around here. Perhaps Whole Foods -- the only place I can get wild gulf shrimp -- has run out of their frozen pre-disaster supply.

Shelf liners are also good for this, and they're washable.

Yeah, you're making a good point, as is Adam. Something about this gets my nose twitching. As big a fan of Alinea as I am -- I had the best meal of my life there -- I would love to see Aviary retain some of the qualities that make the best bars shine, and fear clever for clever's sake, outmoded or otherwise.

Cali.

Deep fried? Pan fried? Coated in flour or cornmeal?

Just got it. What a remarkable book at first glance. What recipes are people going to start cooking?

I thought I'd bump this topic up, as I've been making more sauces lately. (Click here for my adventures with Inner Beauty, both purchased and made.) This weekend I made a citrus, ancho, and tequila sauce from Bruce Kraig and Dudley Nieto's Cuisines of Hidden Mexico, and an arbol and garlic sauce from Rick Bayless's Authentic Mexican. Fresh out of the blender, I like the latter better: his use of toasted pepitos and sesame seeds gives the sauce terrific depth, and it's only been aging for a day. Anyone else loading up for a cold winter?

That honey sounds fantastic. What kind of honey do you use with them?

I regret to announce that every pomegranate I've tried this year has been a flavorless, lousy disaster, much to the dismay of my daughter, who looks forward to pomegranate season every year. It's early in the season, I know, but these things are appalling.