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I haven’t been in a couple of years, but the best thing besides the antipasto bar used to be the grilled double-thick veal chop served with a winy gravy and shoestring fries. Normal eaters beware: It was big enough for two to share.

The beautiful pig at Great NY Noodle Town (to give the restaurant its full, recently updated due) is served with a small dish of hoisin sauce, a nice sweet complement generally ignored in the rush to disappear the meat; there’s also a small pool of salty, soy-based sauce beneath the pig on the serving dish. The flowering chives were delicious the last two times I had them, despite being flowerless during flowering season. The chicken and sausage casserole is on the permanent “specials” list below the regular menu under the glass tabletop, and includes some unannounced black mushrooms that lend a smoky, earthy undertone. The salt-baked dishes (which are neither baked nor especially salty) can be variable, but even when the crust is insufficiently crisp, the seafood within is tender and juicy when consumed immediately. Edit: Adjective addition.

Plus two men, minus one. I regret that I shall not be able to attend. To relieve any suspense, the product from Peanut Butter & Co. in the Village would have won the taste test. Easily. Have fun, all

La C's address invites Bedford/Banksville confusion, but here it is: La Crémaillère Restaurant 46 Bedford-Banksville Road, Bedford, NY 10506 Phone: (914) 234-9647 A store locator for their ice cream may be found here.

I visited Molyvos so long ago, and left the bar so groggy from an impromptu preprandial ouzo tasting, that I barely recall with whom I dined or, atypically, exactly what I ate. What stands out in my shaky memory, however, were the warm breads, grilled octopus, grilled whole fish, and baklava. (The fish was filleted more or less expertly by the waiter, perhaps because he didn’t trust us with so sharp an object as a knife.) The appetizer spreads, meatball appetizer, lamb chops, spinach, and dessert fritters must have been less, um, memorable. I think we also had potatoes. Perhaps observing the Ouzo’s effect on our party, the waiter selected a Greek cabernet, rather than something more traditionally Greek. No after-dinner drinks were served. Mint tea was mint tea. I’d do the octopus and fish again, bypassing the ouzo. Even Dr. Atkins would approve.

Toby, here’s a bit more of the first review in the first issue of Seymour Britchky’s Restaurant Reporter. It illustrates the state of the art in restaurants and restaurant criticism, circa October, 1971. The headings below are mine; the review itself is a seamless essay, one of his relatively rare “raves.” On the restaurant: “La Crémaillère is unquestionably one of the finest eating places in the country, and it compares well with the best restaurants in France. Throughout the menu the food is consistently superb. The service is knowledgeable and earnest, and the china, crystal and flatware are elegant and always sparkling. The tables are large, though closer together than they should be in a restaurant of this stature.” On the menu: “The wording of the menu is an immediate clue that this is a first class establishment. It is in French, with English translation where necessary, and nowhere is there a superfluous adjective. Nothing is succulent or crisp or fluffy or done to a turn. Each dish is called by its name, and the superlatives are left to the customers.” He lists items both “familiar” (mackerel in white wine, snails, saucisson chaud, vichyssoise, onion soup, frogs’ legs Provençale, kidneys in mustard sauce, steaks and chops, chocolate mousse, and fruit tarts) and “less familiar” (smoked trout, poached turbot mousseline, roast pigeon with juniper berries, sweetbreads in champagne sauce, and filet mignon in “a sauce highly flavored with truffles”), observing of the familiar items that “[a]t La Crémaillère” one tastes them as if for the first time.” On the preparation: “One quality stands out in all the food at La Crémaillère – an almost amazing purity. Many of the dishes require complex preparation, but the fundamental character of the food – the fish, the meat, the vegetables – is always preserved, heightened and brought out, rather than embellished or disguised. The buttered boiled potatoes are an example. They are served with the warm sausages appetizer and with poached fish, and they cannot be described as anything but perfect, elemental potato. How is such a thing achieved? Perhaps it is done by starting with good potatoes, cooking them with the coarse French salt which tastes better than American salt, cutting the potatoes to equal size, so that the right cooking time for one is right for all. But these are simple steps, and there is more to it than that, as evidenced by the tasteless potatoes served in most places.” I won’t incur the wrath of Lawyer Guy by quoting much further; suffice it to say that the rest of the review and the newsletter demonstrates Mr. Britchky’s insight, wisdom, and acerbic wit. He also reviewed the original Brasserie (“Presumably we must be grateful to the Brasserie. It is the only decent non-Oriental restaurant in the city open 24 hours a day, every day of the year.”), Stonehenge, Le Pont Neuf, and The Ginger Man in this issue. I’ll close with the first and last paragraphs of what might now be called the Restaurant Reporter’s mission statement: “The ideal restaurant serves excellent food in agreeable surroundings, courteously and efficiently. Few such places exist. Of the 30,000 restaurants in New York and surrounding communities, only a dozen or so consistently measure up to these standards, with fewer than a hundred more that can be classified as very good, but not great.” “The Restaurant Reporter accepts no advertising or other incentives that could affect its objectivity. No member of the staff may identify himself as such to any restaurant employee. The experience of the reviewer is that of the ordinary diner in search of a good meal.” Familiar dishes, familiar issues.

Scroll through the first page of Overused restaurant reviewer words & metaphors.

Rachel, this is probably not a Cabrales-style restaurant, roast chicken or no. Robert, in an earlier thread, FG said that adjectives were the opiate of the lazy food writer (not his exact words). I'm certainly lazy, and I'm no food writer, but out of respect I thought that I'd try at least to restrain myself.

We drove cautiously along the country back road, simultaneously enjoying the blazing autumnal foliage while squinting up each drive for some sign of a restaurant. Suddenly we saw it, a hanging sign saying “La Crémaillère” at the entrance to a small gravel lot. We walked up to a sprawling old white clapboard farmhouse – circa 1750, we later learned – and entered the country outpost of La Caravelle. The interior was at once rustic and elegant, early American and country French, immediately home. Dinner was both up-to-date and near-perfect: I ate onion soup, escargot, duckling bigarade, a small salad with sauce vinaigrette, home-made sorbet, a freshly baked fruit tart (with crust a tad soggy, if truth be told), and dark, rich coffee. We drank a spicy Gewürztraminer and a mid-level Bordeaux, and stumbled back to the car sated and happy. The cost of the meal for four, including wine, tax, and tip was $100. That was my first contact with serious French restauration, nearly thirty years ago. Barely out of my teens and developing an interest in life’s finer things, I headed north with three older buddies to try the first restaurant reviewed in Seymour Britchky’s new Restaurant Reporter: La Crémaillère in beautiful Bedford, New York. Mr. Britchky wrote, “La Crémaillère is unquestionably one of the finest eating places in the country, and compares well with the best restaurants in France.” Fast-forward to 2002: Thinning, graying hair, slightly thickening waistline, world-weary ennui, once again Autumn. Inspired by Lizziee’s tour de France but shy a transoceanic ticket, I thought I’d revisit Westchester County and my own past by way of lunch. Unlike myself, La Crémaillère appeared little changed. While in no way institutional, the place had the aura of beloved old institution. Everything felt just as I expected, and the food was unadventurous but delicious. We began with glasses of Champagne -- not Krug, but OK -- while tearing into warm, crusty bread. The butter (uncultured American butter, Nina and Jaybee) was served too cold, but, to be fair, we arrived slightly before noon, the first of only three lunch parties that day. The prix fixe offered a choice of soup or appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert for a reasonable $33. Having come this far, we chose both soup and appetizer for a supplemental charge. I didn’t steal a menu, so here’s lunch from memory, related out of deference to FG with minimal adjectival interference: Hot vichysoisse. (We ordered billi-bi as well, but minor confusion resultied in double vichysoisses.) A plate of two terrines, liver mousse, cornichons, coleslaw, (sorry, fresh cabbage salad), radicchio, endive, and grainy mustard, sided by warm toast. A riff on the usual snails with garlic, shallots, parsley, butter, i.e., those very ingredients, including whole roasted garlic cloves, in a creamy risotto. Crisply roasted half chicken (great skin!) in a slightly sweet reduction with a hint of black truffle, served with roasted tiny potatoes (tangy from goose/duck/chicken fat?), mushrooms, caramelized onions, and peas. Leg of baby lamb, rare as requested though slightly too cool, in a pan sauce, served with spinach and a ragout of white beans, artichokes, olives, and probably tomato, atop some very potato-y potato puree. Molten-center chocolate cake with white mint chocolate-chip ice cream. The plate was decorated with a leaf design, of translucent raspberry sauce outlined in chocolate, that looked like edible stained glass. An ice cream sampler, of chocolate almond, pistachio, and black cherry, on a meringue-cookie platform in a pool of warm chocolate-mocha sauce. Each ice cream was exemplary of its kind. Both desserts were decorated with crisp wafers of different shapes. Decaffeinated coffee, maybe even French-press coffee, but hey, two cups probably won’t kill me. A half-bottle of 1997 Bouchard Gevrey-Chambertin from an extensive list went beautifully with our entrées. All plates were nicely arranged, with the meats, including the chicken, sliced and carefully reassembled. Aside from the bit about the soup, service from the captain, waiter, and bus staff was impeccable. Those ice creams are available in pint containers labeled Crème Crémaillère, probably even in a gourmet shop near you. The sonority of “Crème Crémaillère” notwithstanding, a crémaillère is not a dairy ("creamery"), but rather the rack, or hook, from which a kettle once hung in the hearth. Watch those accents! For the record, recent kitchen graduates are said to include David Burke and Waldy Malouf; under William Savarese, according to John Mariani in the Wine Spectator, the dinner “menu has become comfortably modern, incorporating new ingredients into fresh ideas thoroughly based on sound French principles.” One aspect of this modernization is apparently that the menu, at least at lunch, is now in English; perhaps dinner is more formal, or perhaps the restaurant maintains parallel sets and we just had that tourist look about us. As we left, a magazine photographer commandeered the front room for a dessert shoot. My lunch was but a single data point, but I’d gladly return. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If anyone is interested, I’ll be willing to post further excerpts from Britchky’s 1971 review. It beautifully illustrates how our concept of “cuisine” may have changed, but the essence of cooking – and restaurant reviewing – really has not.

I’m certainly no fan of the precautionary principle when applied to official policy -- and I’ve cheerfully eaten red meat for the thirty years that it’s been considered by the health busybodies to be tantamount to smoking asbestos cigarettes -- but I find studies like the ones cited in Science News useful input to making informed individual, personal decisions. (Nice twist, though, about the more logical the hypothesis the less likely its truth.) In summary, counselor, I found your reaction disproportionate. Perhaps you overreacted to my assault on your apparent brewing method of choice, or perhaps you’ve just been consuming way too much coffee. Like about a liter per day? Edit: Added them parens.

Hey, are there enough trees in Holland to make paper filters? I've done no further independent poking about, but the references and related reading at the bottom of the article from Science News include the following (emphasis mine): van Rooij, J., et al. 1995. A placebo-controlled parallel study of the effect of two types of coffee oil on serum lipids and transaminases: Identification of chemical substances involved in the cholesterol-raising effect of coffee. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 61(June):1277. Does it really seem unreasonable that filters might, um, filter?

FG, considering the amount of French Press coffee you're consuming, take a peek about halfway down this thread for some information on the health implications of drinking unfiltered coffee. (Search for "cafestol," without the comma or quotes.) BTW, in formulating a link, is there a way to specify a particular post or page position?

A reasonable description as well of Blue Smoke's pork ribs, though for completely unrelated reasons.

This is a paste of a quick note I sent to a friend after dining at Blue Smoke a few Thursdays ago: Blue Smoke had no dinner reservations available in the 6:00-7:00 p.m. timeframe, but the reservationist suggested that we just march in, as they pre-book only half the tables. We were seated immediately at about 6:30 in a booth in the packed, noisy bar area to a meal better than I had been led to fear. Briefly: Malty house draft; frybread that would have been better with the traditional honey than the house’s flavored butter and jalapeno marmalade (yet a second dish this week, and I now forget the first, that was almost, but not quite, as good as a freshly made street-fair zeppole); very good St. Louis-style pork ribs, meaty and juicy; less meaty, less interesting baby backs; dry, spare (in the austere, fleshless sense), overly black-peppered beef ribs; dry, overly black-peppery sausage; good shredded pork in a mild sauce; and a slightly dry but otherwise good chicken breast. The barbecued meats were part of the two samplers we ordered, a “Rib Sampler” and a “Rhapsody in ‘Cue”; to my surprise, the latter omitted beef brisket, though it did include more of those nice pork ribs. None of the meats was intensely smoky, but, as I said, the St. Louis ribs were fine indeed, contrary to earlier reports I’d read. I liked our sides of cornbread (which my friend found insufficiently sweet, but keep in mind that he guzzled diet Coke with maraschino cherries through the meal) and creamed spinach; some slightly spicy cole slaw was included with the samplers. The “magic dust” and other condiments went unsampled. Service was prompt and friendly, though I realized later that we received no house bread basket, if there was one to receive, perhaps because we ordered the cornbread. But for the warnings that Blue Smoke is notoriously inconsistent, I’d happily return for a full rack of the St. Louis ribs, which would, I suspect, provide more meat than either of the samplers for about the same price.

The "Sunday Bacon" is nicely smoked and really tasty. Thanks for the tip, FG. Zabar's also had Niman bacon, sliced to order, for roughly the same price. Sadly, I didn't have time to wait on line to perform a comparison. Has anyone else tried Niman's? Is it also nitrite-free? The slab on display did have an uncured look about it.

It's true, all of it. My steak, though overcooked (ordered rare; done medium at one end, medium-rare at the other), was delicious, everything else was no less than good, and that chocolate galette... One surprise was Mr. London himself. For some reason, I was expecting Mitchel (one 'l') London to be some tall, elegant Brit like our Wilfrid; instead, he turned out to be this haimisch Jewish fella. Visit before the place shuts down, raises prices, messes with the steak, or becomes impossibly crowded.

What about Bar Demi on Irving Place, run by our very own Nesita?

You're the Mr. Guy with the roaster and the stack of books, but I always thought that freshly dark-roasted beans were oily, losing that sheen as they aged, i.e., that the oil was a good sign. On the second point: Based on your descriptions to date, I was expecting FGHRC coffee to be better than even carefully purchased commercial roastings, not worse, due to the enthusiast's ability to find higher-quality beans.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the freshly roasted beans degrade with time. If they last for more than a day or so, then any difference in quality between FGHRC and that at shops in the city that reportedly sell day-old beans will be due to the quality of the beans themselves. Cook's Illustrated had better watch out.

Steve P.: How important to you is it to live dangerously? When the man in the kitchen is both composer and performer, there’s always the possibility of improvisation -- of a meal different from, and better than, any meal ever served before -- and also the danger of failure. Is this an important component of “soul?” If so, the flawless reproduction of even perfectly conceived dishes could well leave you cold.

Is this the thread to which you refer?

More cant, I'm afraid. I now realize that your post was just a parody. Sorry for taking it seriously.

Stefany, think of how ugly and offensive you might find your statement if, as many might well do, we swapped "Democrat" and "Republican," and replaced "Torricelli" with "Thomas," and "Clinton" with "Nixon." To paraphrase Plotnicki in an only slightly different context, it's fine in civilized discourse to attack ideas, but beneath contempt and dignity to resort to empty ad hominem. By the way, I’m of libertarian bent; to me, our rulers are pretty much all a**holes.

Does peanut butter have insufficient snob appeal? Horizontal: PB&Co., Bazzini, Smucker's Natural, Jif, Skippy. Vertical: PB&Co. smooth, chunky, spicy.

To P.'s review I can add only that my steak was also overcooked, though less so than his, and not better otherwise. (Steak Frites on 16th Street serves a tastier steak of similar configuration at a better price.) However, I was very, very hungry and dispatched it rapidly. P., to his credit, left something on his plate, as did Jordyn, whose lamb looked quite nice. We encountered a few minor service and billing mishaps, quickly remedied, including, unfortunately, the rapid removal of someone else's bowl of light and lacy onion rings (dusted with curry?) from our table before I could grab more than a scant handful. As for the décor and the crowd, I thought we fit right in.