dagordon

We've only been to Five Guys once, the Center City one. It was an awesome fast-food burger. At least as good as any In-N-Out burger I've had. And of course the fries were far superior, though that's not difficult, as In-N-Out's, even when ordered well-done, still kind of suck. We didn't get them Cajun style, will try that next time. As far as LaBan's complaints, our burgers were dripping with juice, and we experienced no burger implosion or crumbling do to over-zealous squishing...

You two were involved in the second episode of bumping into friends -- but I didn't know how closely to protect your anonymity.

We stopped by the bar at M last night intending to just get a couple of cocktails, but the spring menu looked so good... Cocktails: I started with a Corpse Reviver No. 2, then a Parisian Martini with Hendrick's, Lillet, thyme syrup, and an orange twist. M Punch for dessert. They were all fantastic, but the Corpse Reviver was my favorite; a lot going on in that drink. This was only our second time having the food at M -- our first experience was a tasting menu several months ago. We were underwhelmed with the food then; everything was solid, but nothing particularly memorable. The food last night was simply on a different level from the food that we had the first time. Perhaps our first visit was simply on an off night? We had the romaine salad and the quail to start, followed by the black bass and the boneless rack of lamb. The bass was quite good; the other three dishes were superb. This was my first time (knowingly) having quail from Griggstown Quail Farm in Princeton, and it was one of the best quail dishes I've ever had. There was something studiokitchen-like about the lamb dish, both in presentation and concept. (Wish I had a picture.) A row of perfectly pink lamb medallions in jus with a spring pea and morel concoction parallel to it and a roasted spring onion with micro spring onions on top of it off to the side. This was just a home run. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all day. The lamb itself was wonderfully tender and flavorful. Oh, and a quite generous portion of Roaring Forties Blue for $7. Very impressed with the food last night. It was a blast sitting at the bar, enjoying Katie's company and skill, and we twice bumped into friends at the bar.

Isn't this evidence that the glass wasn't perfectly clean/dry to begin with? I have some negative associations with Osteria's wine service -- the tiny Muscato poor, the giving my VIP dining companion a free glass of wine as compensation for having served me a corked glass...

we've been curious about that place for so long... for whatever reason, it always struck us as a front for some other kind of operation.

I hope you don't mind that I've taken some liberties to transform your description into a haiku: "Springtime Beckons with Fiddlehead" Delicate, lacy Baby asparagus like Oh, forest floor funk.

Interesting. Perhaps they have a temperature control issue. I went for the first time this afternoon and had precisely the opposite complaint. The pistachio and fiordilatte that I had, flavor-wise, were quite good, though I think that Il Laboratorio's pistachio has a definite edge. Texturally, though, they were quite strange. Far too soft. But I'm not convinved that this was solely due to their being too warm; the texture wasn't even like slightly melted gelato. The texure was reminiscent of soft-serve ice cream in a way; it felt machine-expelled.

Or Tanqueray No. 10... can't really drink that stuff.

Ah, that's my soon-to-be father-in-law. He's, um, memorable. Part of my disappointment was that my folks and my fiancee's folks were in town, and I really wanted this meal to blow them away. The only dishes in common between our meals were the salmon tartare and the gobo root + snapper + shumai + we had fiddleheads instead of the asparagus w/miso. As disappointed as you were with your meal, it looks substantially better than ours. Would really have appreciated some uni souffle. The breaded shad roe is actually not new -- we had that a year ago (to the day, I think!). It stood out as perhaps the only bad dish Matt had ever served us.

Thanks for the heads up! Hedricks is absolutely fantastic stuff.

Well I actually do prefer it when Matt is preparing the sushi himself, not only because it does matter who is preparing it, but much more importantly because omakase should really be an interactive experience. Sushi should come out a couple of pieces at a time, so that the chef can see how you respond to it. The truly great meals we had at Fuji (which, by the way, I would count as some of the best meals of my life) prominently featured this interaction with Matt himself. But my point about Matt being behind the bar wasn't at all about this -- my point was just that if Matt is behind the bar then he'll see what's going on and will have more control over what's going on at the bar. Had he been there last night it would have been impossible for him not to have seen the abject horror on our faces when we were served maki after maki. He'd have noticed that we were not our usual ebullient selves. He'd have noticed that something was very wrong. That is, I find it very hard to believe that omakase at Fuji with Matt somewhere behind the bar wouldn't be great. It just seems like he's no longer at the bar.

We were immediately worried when we walked in and saw that Matt wasn't at the sushi bar. We recognized Chen from the old Fuji but the other sushi chefs were two new guys. Nothing we had was bad. The meal was just completely mediocre, displaying absolutely none of the magic that we know Matt is capable of. And what was so sad was that it wasn't like they tried to acheive this magic and failed; there was no attempt. The only offerings that we had from the sushi bar were three different kinds of sashimi (maguro, hamachi, and i think fluke) and a bunch of rolls. We went to Fuji for an omakase dinner and weren't served any nigiri!! This is unfathomable. None of that toro, that amazing salmon, that scallop with truffle oil, uni, etc... And the sashimi and rolls came out immediately after an amuse. So we were pretty much stuffed with this stuff before any cooked dishes came out, which was odd; normally we end with sushi. A soft-shell crab dish from the kitchen was good, but unexceptional (and the crabs could have been much crispier). A scallop and foie dish came out toward the end, at a point when, given the insane amonunts of maki we had been served, there was no way we could have eaten it; but apart from this it was in a way too sweet sauce, the foie didn't seem of terribly high quality, and the tendon on one of my scallops hadn't been removed. Part of me says that they've only been open a couple of weeks, so it's way too early for any serious criticism. But -- They served us a rainbow roll. Now, I don't mean to sound snobby. I don't mind eating rainbow rolls. But it's the kind of thing I'll get from Whole Foods, if I have a sushi craving and that's the only thing available. I do not go to Fuij to be served rainbow rolls. Matt knows us; he knows we're not rainbow roll people. We go to Fuji to be wowed. No one has ever been wowed by a rainbow roll. There was also a spider roll. In fact, the sushi bar was like a spider roll production line. Massive amounts of the soft shells would arrive from the kitchen fried in an oddly red batter to be put into rolls. Again, the spider roll was fine. Not what I go to Fuji to eat. The point is that the whole concept of our meal bore no resemblance to the omakase meals of the old Fuji. I don't see how this sort of thing is a kink that's going to be worked out as the restaurant gets its footing. It was like finding out that a close, genius friend of yours had been lobotomized. Has anyone been to the new Fuji and seen Matt actually working at the bar for an extended period of time?

Just got back from an omakase meal at Fuji for a very special occasion dinner. I fear that the old Fuji is gone forever. I would go into details but, quite honestly, I'm too heartbroken.

the wolfe's neck, even if not dry-aged, would still be a quality piece of meat. but the OP was going to go through the hassle of having meat shipped from maine, and it seems to me that for the time and money involved you could get meat of comparable quality that's also dry-aged. much of what i liked about the wolfe's neck in the tasting was the effects of the dry-aging. i didn't realize you had done this yourself -- nice work. (fwiw, we had a wolfe's neck hanger steak at lacroix a couple of days later, not dry-aged, and it was pretty mediocre.)

Well that sounds pretty awesome. Is there a prize if one person manages to finish the whole thing?

The overall winner in terms of quality, by a fairly substantial margin, was Lobel's. The Wolfe Neck, Luger's, and Wells CAB were a level down; IIRC I thought the Wolfe Neck and Luger's were comparable and the Wells CAB a notch below both. In any case, the Wolfe Neck we had was dry-aged for 30 days, and I thought had a pretty pronounced dry-aged flavor. It was sourced from D'Artagnan. But, I think, you can only get whole primal cuts from them. If you can't get the Wolfe Neck dry-aged I wouldn't get it.

The Bryan Flannery California Prime Reserve is from Brandt. In fact, the rumor is that Bryan Flannery is fulfilling Dean and Deluca's online steak orders.

If I absolutely had to get a steak around Philly, as much as it pains me to admit it, I'd probably go to the 9th St Whole Foods and get some of their dry-aged beef. If it looked good. If it didn't, I'd go to Wegmans and get some of their dry-aged Prime, if it looked good. For about the same price as either, though, you can get Bryan Flannery's California Prime Reserve beef, dry-aged for pretty much however long you specify, shipped to you. http://www.bryansfinefoods.com/. (site isn't terribly functional but does have contact info). Strips are $30/lb, rib eyes $23/lb. You will have to pay shipping. But the beef is better than anything you can buy in Philly by a large margin, and is about the same price as the stuff that comes closest to it (again, excluding shipping, but 2-day shipping is very reasonable and the steaks will still arrive cold). I think it's easily the best value in high-end beef these days. If you know at least 2 days ahead of time that you'll be needing beef, Flannery is a no-brainer.

I think the BYOC is as much an environmental issue as it's an issue of not wanting to deal with the splinters that come with the break-apart wooden chopsticks that many places have. Disposable chopsticks are, after all, pretty wasteful.

thanks for the report, bruce! as you know we were worried for a while that we'd experienced matt's genius for the last time, so of course we're very excited. as far as the warm towels -- some people (myself included) eat sushi w/ their fingers -- it's finger food, after all -- so in this case you keep the warm towel throughout the meal and dab your fingers on it every once in a while to clean them off. (unless you're in one of those places that actually provides a separate finger towel for precisely this purpose.) although if you're going to do this usually you neatly fold up the towel, to indicate that you want to keep it; if there were towels crumbled up on the table during the meal this is probably an indication that you wanted them to be cleared. in any case, if this is the only complaint on opening night, i'd say they're in pretty darn good shape!

Yeah, distilled water is pretty vile, actually -- it's not even that it's tasteless, it actually tastes not good to me. The minerals lost in distillation are evidently part of what makes good water taste good (and differences in mineral composition are what's responsible for differences in how various waters taste).

OK, but I think you'd find that the no-spill caps are far preferable to the alternative. How is the Crystal water itself, aside from the acrobatics required?

First, let me say that I believe that this topic is perfectly appropriate for this board, as it concerns the availability of a certain type of beverage in the city, and comparisons among various providers. That beverage is: spring water. For whatever reason (maybe it's the plumbing in our building) we really don't like the taste of our tap water. We've gone through various filters that attach to the faucet, and not only is the resulting water still not very good, but they all seem to break in various ways after like a month. So we've decided to get one of those vertical water dispenser units for our apartment and regular water delivery. We just signed up with Deer Park. The water is ok, not great, but more importantly, the 5 gallon bottles do not have "no-spill" caps. When it's time to put a new bottle on the dispenser, you take the cap off the the bottle, and in one deft motion fling the bottle over, trying to aim the water violently pouring out out into the hole at the top of the dispenser. Of course, water gets everywhere. And this is NOT sanitary. There's a pool of stale water sitting at the top of the cooler. The alternative is to use bottles with "no-spill" caps. The cooler pierces the top of the bottle when the bottle is placed on it, and the system is closed (no open pool of water). Deer Park has said that they will deliver us a new cooler, one that support no-spill caps, and they will provide us with one no-spill cap that we can put on our jugs for use with this cooler. Like I said, though, the Deer Park water is not terrific. And I'm not sure that I have much faith in a water delivery company that does not use no-spill caps by default. The sort of people who don't use no-spill caps seem like the sort of people who, say, aren't going to be that concerned with sanitizing empty water bottles before filling them back up. So, here's my question. Anyone currently have home or office water delivery that they're happy with? A no-spill cap is mandatory. Just to give some sense of our water tastes, we love Volvic, with Fiji a close second.

I've been curious about this for a while -- the NY Times article that FG links to says that most of the smoked salmon out there is from Acme, but this doesn't entail that it's all the same product. Russ & Daughters might, for example, have certain specifications for, say, the eastern Nova that they get from Acme (for example, how it's smoked). Also, as the Times article states, a lot depends on how the fish is stored and handled: FWIW, about 6 months ago I did a comparison between Russ & Daughter's Gaspe and Barney Greengrass's eastern Nova purchased within about 20 minutes of each other and thought that the Greengrass had the edge. But both are excellent products.

Phil's descriptions of the food were right on. In case it isn't clear, this is their new spring menu. I was upset to see some favorites like the tripe and the candele disappear, but the quality of the food last night left no disappointment. This prompts the question: will V have to do another one of his now legendary five night in a row stints (or whatever it was when Osteria first opened) to get a complete sense of the new menu? I'll just add that I found the flavor of the lamb very pleasing. "Muttony" is too strong a description, I think, but, well, it tasted like lamb, and it's pretty rare to get lamb these days that does. Also, I'll emphasize just how delicate the ravioli were. It reminded me of this Halibut and Cod Brandade over polenta dish that we had at Vetri last summer, not at all in terms of flavor (thankfully) but rather in terms of sheer elegance. Now, onto the quirks. Of what use would this forum be if we couldn't complain about every single misstep in an otherwise fantastic meal? 1. A 3oz pour is simply ridiculous for Moscato D'Asti. which can (and in this case WAS) being consumed as an aperitif. 2. At one point I was served a corked glass of Dolcetto; no big deal, it's not really their fault, and they promptly exchanged it. But at the end of the meal they brought out a complimentary glass of dessert wine and gave it to Vadouvan, who was with us, with apologies for having served a corked glass of wine. The gesture was nice, but we couldn't help but interpret it as "So sorry that your dining companion was served a corked glass of wine; here, have some dessert wine on us." Either give it to the whole table or make sure it gets to the person who was TCA assaulted. 3. The coconut gelato had a wickedly spicy finish that was not disclosed when it was described by our server. It was really weird, and I didn't care for it al all. No more spicy coconut gelato, please. Or, describe it as such.