Jason Perlow

I mix nothing with Agricole. The white rhum agricole I use exclusively for Ti Punch and the Rhum Vieux I drink neat.

I didn't care for Scoma's. Of all the Wharf seafood restaurants, Alioto's Pier 8 is the one I have been to that I liked the best. Both Scomas and Aliotos are very touristy, however. That being said, if you are going to eat seafood in San Francisco in a traditional style place, I would recommend The Tadich Grill on California Street, which is the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the Missisippi. They also invented the Cioppino and serve a damn good one at that.

I keep Bacardi, Meyers and Brugal Anejo around just for Rum and Coke mixers. I would never use a Rhum Agricole, the flavor profile would just be all wrong.

You mean like Bobolink? Oh, that's right, that was an advertisement in-between the real segments! ← For what it's worth, Menton, Tony visited Bobolink because his production staff asked me for my reccomendations on a farm-type sustainable agribusiness in New Jersey, and I told them to contact Jonathan and Nina. There is really nothing more to it than that.

Alrighty then Maggie, we'll just be calling the men in the nice white suits now..

Had a great meal with Melkor and msmelkor this week at Incanto -- fantastic fresh pastas, and the chef is a genius with pork and all the weird bits that come with it. I plan to come back to this one quite a bit whenever I am in town.

I'll definitely add my reccomendation for Gary Danko, if near the Wharf is a requirement.

Tandoori Chef in Hackensack has now opened.

The space has now re-opened as another Indian restaurant, Tandoori Chef

Because granite is pourous, dumbass. You can stain it. Silestone is not pourous and much more damage resistant. While you CAN damage it with a very hot pan (like, say if you are stupid enough to put a red hot cast iron right onto the surface), you can put a fairly hot pan onto it when it is cold and not crack it, because it does't have any natural fissures in it like granite does. Edit: Crossposted with Arne.

We have Silestone on our countertops in our kitchen --- we've been very happy with it in the 2 years since our kitchen was remodeled. Very durable and attractive surface, although it was very expensive. That being said I do NOT reccomend using Home Depot Expo to do your kitchen redesign and contracting. They are very slow, hire inexperienced kitchen designers and unreliable contractors. If you want to buy the countertops thru them, fine and dandy, but dont have them be your kitchen designer. Additionally, the Silestone "brand" of quartz countertops that Home Depot Expo has a monopoly on is not the only quartz surface you can buy -- there are competitors of equal quality out there now that any kitchen design specialist should be able to procure for you. If you want to read our entire sordid, 7 month kitchen redesign experience with Expo Design Center, read here: Remodeling the Perlow Kitchen

Something tells me I should have trademarked "Jersey Avenue Mocha Madness".

Indian Chef in the International Food Warehouse in Lodi is great for Tandoori and Dhosa items. They are also opening a full service restaurant, Tandoori Chef, in Hackensack in the old Dragonel and Dhaaba space. They were supposed to open last weekend but they were waiting on the C/O, so it may be opening this week if not already open.

My copy that gets printed in the NYT NJ food section is HEAVILY trimmed... everything has to fit into 350 words. Occasionally the meaning of certain things get radically changed in the process.

Not rats. Spongmonkeys (click)

In addition to Balthazaar, I also reccomend Patisserie St Michel in Teaneck, who also has exceptional pastry: Patisserie St. Michel (click)

You have a problem with five pound lobsters and three pound steaks? I submit that New England lobsters aren't even worth eating until they hit around five pounds. There's not enough claw meat to go around in any less than that. The Portuguese and Spanish in New Jersey are doing the very best they can with ingredients that they have access to -- they don't have access to the same specie of crustaceans and fish that exist on the Iberian peninsula, so absolute "authenticity" is always going to be a tough nut to crack, even in New England. And I'll also submit that the Iberian-style charcuterie coming out of Newark is probably among the best in the entire nation. I'll also submit that if the only Iberian restaurants you can find are tourist-style places serving huge portions of steamed lobster and steak, then you aren't looking in the right places or being particularly adventurous. Seabra's Marisquieria for example is hardly a touristy place, its a locals joint.

Well, it's a good size, but not the largest; that distinction belongs to New Bedford, Massachusetts; The streets here actually resemble a section of Lisbon. Food is great, too, and very authentic-- no giant lobster houses, like Newark, which one would never see in Portugal! A bit more attractive than the Ironbound as well. 3 hours from Northern Jersey, Newark is definitely closer though. http://www.moaa.org/magazine/June2003/f_world.asp ← However if you include ALL Portuguese speakers in Newark to include the Brazilian population, I think you'll find a lot more here than there. That combined with the Spanish (from Spain) population in Newark amounts to a considerable number of people of Iberian heritage or transplants in our state.

The thought had occurred to me that might have been Burger Joint's motivation as well. Irregardless of the company's ties to Kerry and the Democratic party, I happen to really like Heinz products. Heinz recently released an Organic ketchup which I tried a few weeks ago for the first time at a local Legal Seafood back home in NJ -- I happen to like the taste of it better than their regular product because it doesn't contain HFCS, it uses organic sugar as a sweetner, in addition to organic tomatoes. At around $2 per 15oz bottle its a bit more expensive than the regular stuff, but its good.

how does this burger compare to the Shake Shack? will you even respond? ← Shake Shack is an amazing burger. If we had a Shake Shack in Northern NJ, I might very well be eating all my meals there and even White Manna might be in danger of losing my business. That being said... when at the Palisades Center... Fatburger is a far better food court choice than basically anything else there.

So.... just how much Prosciutto did you consume in one sitting? Did you manage to save any?

Went to Burger Joint this evening, and was pleasantly surprised. As you can see, the menu is minimalist and it is IMPOSSIBLE to order a meal without fries. FRIES ARE MANDATORY. You vill haf fries! Obey! The counter. Zee flame grilled burger, with mandatory, but excellent fries, which have skin on them. Perfectly medium rare as ordered, I may add. My only complaint about this place is that they use Hunt's ketchup in the squirt bottles, which I have to say is about the worst possible choice you can have in a ketchup. Even Del Monte would be better. A view of the griddle and grill.

As mentioned on the White Manna thread (click) there is also a Fatburger now at the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack. Unlike glenn, I liked the place a lot. But this may be an issue of franchise variation. The wait was more like 8 or 9 minutes instead of 15, which I thought was reasonable.

I haven't been to the JC Fatburger location. I thought the one in Palisades Center was juicy, had good flavor, and the toppings did not detract from the experience even though I ordered mine fully dressed with everything. As to choice of temperature -- it is my understanding that by law, at least in New Jersey and in New York, pretty much all fast food chains have to cook their ground beef to medium at a bare minimum, in order to kill any parasites or bacteria that could potentially make their customers sick. Its a anti-lawsuit and health department compliance issue more than anything else. So unless you go to a fairly liberal mom and pop type of hamburger place that is willing to look the other way and honor a medium rare burger order, you are going to get your burgers medium no matter what.

I can appreciate that, Steven. But having crappy fries mean I just order more burgers. Yum.