Jason Perlow

Nice report, Big E. And welcome to the site!

Wow. They even pride themselves on serving non-kosher items.

Re. toasting: Correct, o Wise One. Its not just the toasting, though. The groats should be cooked in chicken stock and the onions in it should be cooked in schmaltz. And it should have egg noodle bowties, not farfalle. Kasha for me means Kasha Varnishkes, baby. I can eat my weight in it easy.

Felice, the Italian restaurant on the opposite side of The Diner, is now open.

Felice 279 Kinderkamack Road Oradell, NJ 201-261-0357 Felice is a 2-week old Italian restaurant specializing in fresh pastas, risotto, and brick oven pizzas -- it's located on the adjoining half of the building that was formerly Hagler's on Kinderkamack Road in Oradell, which also houses The Diner. Both restaurants are owned by the owner of Saint's Cafe in Teaneck, and Le Jardin and Brother's Pizza in Edgewater. Rachel, Jhlurie and myself stopped in to eat there tonight -- the interior is spacious with a vaulted ceiling and is painted sort of a panna cotta tuscan orange, with exposed dark brown wood beams, giving it a very warm feel. The kitchen is semi-open, revealing the brick pizza oven. Originally it was intended to be a wood fired oven, but Oradell wouldn't permit it so its a gas fired brick oven. Nevertheless, even with this setback Felice produces very good pizza, for a two week old restaurant. The crust is thin and has a nice chewy texture, and has just the slightest amount of charcoal-burn to the edges to impart that brick oven flavor. The pizza sauce has a very good acid to sweetness ratio, is properly seasoned and is an excellent conveyance for the cheese. The pizzas are all 14" and come in about a dozen gourmet combinations including the standard Margherita. Unfortunately on our first visit we decided to order one of the more ambitious combos -- the Pizza Felice ($13.00), which has a lot of wet ingredients on it -- marinated artichoke hearts, fresh tomato, onions, roasted peppers and prosciutto -- which made it VERY drippy and more of a cut with knife and fork kind of pizza and made the cheese more runny than bubbly. Next time we will order the plain margherita, which we observed on someone else's table and looked perfectly done with nice and bubbly cheese on it. Nevertheless the Felica was very good but in terms of pizza toppings, less is definitely more. We also got a chance to sample the pastas. I ordered the basic cheese ravioli in tomato sauce (Ravioli alla Berta, $12.00), and Jon had the Penne Arrabiata ($10.00). My fresh raviolis were very good -- tomato sauce again was nice and zingy and the ricotta/basil/parsley mixture on the inside was really good. Pasta texture was also very good. Jon's penne was perfectly al dente and his arrabiata had a nice kick of peperoncino without being overpowering. Rachel ordered a baked eggplant with spinach (Melanzanie Florentina, $11.00), which is eggplant rollatine stuffed with fresh sauteed spinach and ricotta. This was a REALLY good dish, and the sauteed spinach was perfectly cooked and not at all overdone. I expected nothing less from this place because The Diner also knows how to treat vegetables properly. Felice utilizes the services of Le Jardin's pastry chef and all the desserts ($6.00)and gelato are made in house. I had the tiramisu -- which was an excellent specimen and managed not to be too overpowering with the coffee. Jon had a flourless chocolate cake which was dense and satisfying without being too over the top in chocolate flavor, and rachel had a banana bread pudding which I thought was excellent. The espresso was good, but I think they still need to tweak the machine or their technique for getting a good crema out of it. Note that this place has a liquor license, and it has a full bar. I didnt get a chance to peruse the wine list this time. Verdict: Oradell and the surrounding area has lacked a decent italian-american place and good pizza for a long time. That void has now been filled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/dining/10WINE.html Nice article by Eric Asimov about Late Harvest Rieslings.

chop it up, fry it and use it as a omlette or quiche stuffing. Cornbread, now you are talking.

Didn't you know, eGullet is french. We've been pronouncing it "eh-goolay" for years.

Put it in Jambalaya, cut it up and use it as you would chorizo and sautee it with onions and eat it with bread.

It is in fact still called Peter Luger Steak Sauce and it is NOT pitched as salad dressing: http://www.peterluger.com/petlugsauc.html http://www.peterluger.com/recipes.html Everything on that site says to use it as an accompaniment to steak OR over ripe tomatoes.

Turkish Coffee in the Yaffa Souk in Tel Aviv by a street vendor, during the summer of 1990. With baklava and Jaffa oranges on the side. My first experience with Turkish/Arabic style coffee and the benchmark for which all others have to live up to. 100 Percent Pure Kona, black, roasted less than an hour old at a coffee plantation on Kona. Drinking JBM at a resort in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, overlooking the Caribbean.

So definitely something like Goma Ae would use ichiban dashi? What about other salad type appetizers? Sumono? Aemono (Nihaizu, Sanbaizu, etc)?

It is a tad bit on the cloyingly sweet side, yeah. Personally I like the A1 Bold or Pick a Peppa. Tabasco Chipotle also works real well as a steak sauce. Tabasco's steak sauce is also pretty good too.

30 year? Where did you get this? I thought the oldest was the 15.

I notice there seems to be a whole bunch of different kind of Dashis. Ichiban Dashi I understand, as its the first brew of the bonito and the konbu. The Niban Dashi I understand is the second brew. But WHEN do you use a first brew as opposed to a second brew dashi? For what dishes? And for what dishes do you use pure konbu dashi or niboshi dashi? Are these things interchangeable at all?

I'm in the midst of reading a compilation of Tom Wolfe's short stories and just finished "The Last American Hero" (I think that's what it was entitled). It's a magazine piece that offered up a portrait of legendary stock car racer Junior Johnson. Wolfe does a wonderful job in the piece of detailing the historical connections between bootlegging and the development of NASCAR. There was very recently an episode of "Extreme History with Roger Daltrey" on the History Channel about this very thing. http://www.historychannel.com/global/listi...82&NetwCode=THC I think it was called "Surviving the Early Days of NASCAR" They'll probably re-show it a couple of times, so if you have a TIVO, I'd set a theme for it.

I read that as well. I'm just telling you what I've heard, from a very reliable source.

Aaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! As I understand the guy responsible for bringing Charles Shaw "Two Buck Chuck" to Trader Joes was fired. I heard from someone currently working on a wine distribution deal with Trader Joes that they lost a LOT of money on it and are not likely to continue doing it at $1.99.

Actually I use Peter Lugers steak sauce on steak. In the restaurant, in fact.

Grib (like crib) in ess.

We have a few threads on barbancourt in the Ministry of Rum forum. Yes, its a great rum. I like the 5 star.

Lucky bastard. Your notes are expected!

Jonathan -- regarding the Diva de Provence, I have heard very mixed things about it from pro chefs. Chef Marco formerly of CRAFT in NYC told me that they did not stand up to constant abuse like regular commercial ranges and that they needed constant repair. In fact he semi jokingly told me that the repair company owner named his fishing boat "CRAFT" because he was such a great and frequent customer. CRAFT has since removed their Diva de Provence ranges and now have more commericial restaurant ranges installed.

AGA fan and owners site: http://www.agacentral.com This site has everything you ever wanted to know about AGA ranges. Lots of good stuff here.

Some history: http://www.aga.com/web/web2000/com/WPPcom....er?opendocument UK AGA site: http://www.aga-rayburn.co.uk/ North American AGA site: http://www.aga-ranges.com/ Apparently you can get the best of both worlds with the AGA 6-4 http://www.aga-ranges.com/models/six_four.cfm