kpurvis

1. Good barbecue: Drive 50 miles to Lexington, for Lexington No. 1, or 60 miles to Shelby, for Bridges Barbecue Lodge. Although I'm quite happy staying in town for Bill Spoon's on South Boulevard. 2. Great bakery: What kind? For French pastries, Marguerite's on North Davidson, for cakes, Tizzert's or Edible Art; for cookies, Nona's in University City; for bread, Nova on Central Ave. 3. Grits: If you really want to be a purist, order them online from www.hoppinjohn.com or www.ansonmills.com. Or get Old School brand grits, which are made locally. They're sold at a few supermarkets and farmers markets, or you can go to the source. The guy who makes them has a little food store and cafe in Locust, in Stanly County, on N.C. 24/27. Anything else? Oh yeah, reasonably priced. That's in the eye of the wallet holder, isn't it? I think 2.99 a pound for old-breed French chickens at Lowe's Food is pretty reasonably priced considering the quality, but some people strongly disagree.

Just an FYI, Zoe: Jestine's is in Charleston, not Charlotte. Not to worry, we call it "The CH factor": Charleston/Charlotte/Charleston, W.Va./Charlottesville, Va. all get mixed up regularly. And I heard a great story recently about an unfortunate Greenville, S.C./Greensboro, N.C. mixup involving a plane and an expensive rental car. She was lucky they didn't send her to Greenville, N.C. Charleston is the very old city on the South Carolina coast. Charlotte is the relatively new city about three hours to the west.

One suggestion I'd offer: I notice a big difference in flavor when I make C&D by starting with a hen to make the broth. After thinking there was no such thing as a stewing hen anymore, I discovered that if I look in the frozen poultry case, where they keep things like capons and bone-in turkey breasts outside the Thanksgiving season, they usually have hens, too. You can spot them because they're bigger than a roasting chicken. When you thaw one of those and use it to make broth, you'll get broth with much deeper flavor. When the chicken is cooked, the skin is thicker and the meat is darker and firmer.

Thanks, Jason. Two photo interns, Brandon Smith and Carrie Leonard, took that assignment and ran with it. And we're graced with an excellent page designer, Christine Kwon, who came up with the idea of a "Brady Bunch" montage of faces and foods that was effective on the printed page.

For those who are interested, the package I was working on ran today in The Charlotte Observer. It will be posted for a week at www.charlotte.com/living, or you can find a slide show at www.charlotte.com (click on multimedia). It's also available in Spanish. It includes Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

In researching the recipes we're running with this story, I was struck once again by the way the same ingredients show up in so many different ways. Every cuisine has a basic sauce/marinade/condiment/cooking base (call it what you will) that uses the same ingredients, and yet you end up with different flavor profiles. Mojo criollo, sofrito, pebre, chimichurri -- all have ingredients in common (onions, garlic, herbs, oil), all have variations, and yet one bite and you know which country's influence is at work. Not a very original observation, I'm afraid. But the best I can do while chopping through big piles of cilantro.

Thanks, Rachel and Daisy. I've been playing with the sofrito all weekend and I'm hooked. Yellow rice is a once-a-week staple in my house, usually served with black beans and chicken breasts soaked in mojo and baked. Yellow rice with sofrito sauteed in a little olive oil first is so good, I'm never going back. I had a dinner party Saturday night with Cook Illustrated's version of Cuban roast pork, yellow rice with sofrito, black beans and a watercress, orange and heart of palm salad. Our friend from Venezuela did the honors with the fried plantains. Several of us are from South Florida, and we agreed that we were very, very happy.

Thanks, Daisy. Do you usually saute sofrito in achiote oil?

My apologies. I try to avoid the sin of asking for help researching a food article. But I've been digging, researching and testing on this one for several days and simply find myself more confused. For an article on Latin American cuisines, I'm including recipes for several useful sauces that are specific to their cultures. Mojo criollo, pebre and chimichurri have been no problem. But sofrito recipes seem to be across the board. Of course, home cooking sauces are always specific to the cook -- everybody's momma does it differently -- but in this case, the variations are so wide, I want to make sure I'm making the right choice. I've found sofritos that start with a cooked base, sofritos that are green and sofritos that are red. The bottled version from Goya is tomato-based and tastes more like a pasta sauce. For tasting, I finally settled on Daisy Martinez' version, discussed in more detail on the Food & Media site. In the discussion on that site, I see no criticism of it as inauthentic. But unlike most of the other recipes I've found, it is raw, with no cooked base. It is most definitely green, with no reddish coloring from annato. There are tomatoes and red bell pepper in it, but it has no tomato flavor. Any feedback? Is that sofrito specific only to her, or does it fall into a camp that anyone from Puerto Rico would recognize as an acceptable sofrito?

Perhaps it was so the tea would keep longer? When I worked at a diner in Chapel Hill, we'd brew a batch of sweet and unsweet in the morning. Then at closing, we'd have to sweeten the unsweet to keep it for the next day. I'm not really sure why we did it, but maybe the sugar preserves it? Or is that just crazy talk? ← I don't think the sugar would preserve it. But I bet it would disguise the taste of stale tea.

There is also a theory, quoted in Fred Thompson's "Iced Tea" book, that barbecue restaurants started making super sweet tea in the '50s because sugar was cheap and it was a way to stretch the tea. I haven't found any confirmation for that, but these days, tea itself is a lose leader. I know way more about tea at the moment than I have any right to. My editors assigned me to a special project for the month of June. They asked the readers to recommend their favorite places for iced tea (we got 94 places from close to 200 people). Then I was assigned to go to some of the places, write 10 short word "postcards" capturing the places and various themes surrounding iced tea. We finished the whole she-bang with a tasting of the three top vote-getters using wine experts. It was fun, but exhausting. We did a slide show of the places that is still posted at www.charlotte.com under "multimedia."

I've eaten at FIG once and had his food at a chef event another time. I liked it very much, particularly a roast pork dish of bits of meat formed into a loaf, wrapped in caul fat and browned. I have had feedback from people who didn't like the service, but no one who hasn't liked the food. If you were looking for other possibilities, I'm always excited by the food at SNOB.

I can't speak for the Raleigh airport. I've never flown in or out there. But Wilmington is a lot of fun -- it's got the history of Charleston, but it's less crowded, more laid-back. I'm sure there are others with more up-to-date information than mine. I'm in Charllotte and last did extensive eating in Wilmington about two years ago. But I'll throw out a few suggestions: Caffe Phoenix or Circa 1922 in downtown (I think it's called High Street -- the street about a block up from the waterfront that borders the river). Both are locally owned, have creative menus. On the waterfront, Elijah's has pretty views, but otherwise it's a pretty standard fried-or-broiled seafood place. If you want something very nice for the two of you, consider Port Land Grille. It's out from town on the road to Wrightsville Beach, in Lumina Station. It's very nice and when I was there the menu was well-larded with local catch.

When it rains, it pours. We also had an article in The Observer yesterday. It's available at The Charlotte Observer

By coincidence, I had just bought the first set of the DVDs of her early shows when the book came out. It's particularly fun to watch those first shows, then read the descriptions in the book. It adds a new dimension to her troubled friendship with Simone Beck when you see the footage of them cooking at the house in France.

I wrote a column on this very subject recently. Here's the link: charlotte.com To cut to the chase, in the column I used Momofuko (go early), Hearth and Bread Bar at Tabla. But it was also about dining alone at restaurant bars with views of the kitchen.

I think that's part of the Bolito Misto service. ← Gee, and I thought that stool next to me was for my purse. Also, a belated correction: It should be bollito, of course. I apologize from the bottom of my former-copy editor heart.

I've eaten there, but I've hesitated to post for various reasons -- I didn't take notes afterward because I didn't plan to write about it, I'm not a reviewer, the meal was six weeks ago, and I was with people who were recognized by Lidia and Joe. However, for what it's worth: I sampled many things because I was dining with a group that makes a point of sharing; a couple of people had fish that was particularly good, and I was taken with the flavor of the sformato that Frank Bruni had mentioned in his review. For my main course, I had the bolito misto. I had never had it before and wanted to experience it; one of my companions has spent a great deal of time in Italy and she ordered it as well and walked me through the process. Based on her reactions and my own admittedly limited experience, it was very good -- the mustardo was a high point, with a balance of heat, sweet and the chewiness of the fruit, but of course, I have nothing to compare it to. A couple of the cuts seemed a little dry, especially the capon (which I would expect to be tough), but most of the other parts, particularly the tongue and the short rib, were excellent, and the variety of cuts and the production of the service from the cart were a great show. The wine list was particularly interesting to one of my companions, who is an expert on wine, but I expected a good selection because of past experience with other Joe B. places. We stuck with one of his wines; the price/quality balance was excellent. On the service, since we were known, I was watching the tables around us and I don't think anyone had less solicitous service. Lidia stopped and talked to us a couple of times, but she did the same at many tables. Part of the experience of the place is that sense of being welcomed and cared for and the emphasis on service. Having her in the dining room, especially at the open cooking area in the middle whisking that zabiglione, gave a personal touch that offset the size of the room, which could have seemed cold.

The moment in the kitchen with Rose flips the bread with the egg and the red peppers in the skillet, and she barely turns around and yells at the grandfather and the dogs: "Upstairs. Everybody upstairs." That movie SMELLED good.

I'm not a retail expert, but I've done plenty of reporting on them. So I can offer a few reasons: 1. Stores go where the people are. Traffic alone would seem to indicate that a lot of people are in Cary. 2. Stores go where the people with disposable incomes are. The cars being driven in that traffic would indicate that people with money and the inclination to shop are in Cary. 3. Stores go where the people with disposable incomes are, and their competitors aren't. Whole Foods, Trader Joes, IKEA and chains like them do research, and they look for spots where they can find an underserved and eager market. The good news is, that means charming downtown areas like Raleigh's Five Points can be incubators of small, locally owned businesses because the big sharks are fishing elsewhere.

For what it's worth, I ate at Bread Bar on Saturday night and give it high marks on several points: 1. For a woman traveling alone on business, it's a find. I sat at the bar, where I could amuse myself watching the kitchen staff. The maitre d' and waiter quickly noticed me and made me feel at home. I joined in on some banter with the young chef who was running the line and the next thing I knew, samples were coming my way. (And no, I didn't have my reporter's notebook out, so they had no reason to "make" me.) 2. Thanks to all those scooby snacks, I got to try more than I expected. I loved the mussels in rich, red broth of curry and caramelized onions. Chicken tikka was as tasty as advertised, very moist, but a whole plate of it would have been very rich. Too bad it doesn't come in a small-plate version. Chickpea soup with calamari was unusual, also rich, but the calamari gets lost in all that spicy heat. Roti was OK, but next time, I'll go with the garlic naan or the stuffed cheddar naan. Forgive the lack of proper spelling -- see, told you I didn't have my notebook out -- but for dessert, I definitely preferred the frozen Tahitian vanilla custard with blood oranges over the soft pistachio custard. All in all, I give Bread Bar high marks as a lonely-traveler refuge. For the record, I also ate alone at two other restaurant bars over the weekend: Momofuko (house ramen and pork buns) and dessert only (goats milk panna cotta and spiced hot chocolate) at Hearth.

Hey, Dean, my information is probably woefully out of date (quoting Dorothy after the Good Witch floats off in her bubble: "People come and go so quickly here"). But what about Mariakakas in Chapel Hill, for imported food? Is that still fun? Also, last time I was in Carrboro, there was a small seafood market on a side street near the Weaver Street market that had a good selection of N.C. coastal catches. Do you know the place I'm talking about?

It may be a moot point after all the disagreement on the issue, but I was able to get a link to the original series. The link will take you to the column I described, and on the right side of the page, there are four related links. The first is a sidebar, about transporting the elderly to stores, and the next three are the three main stories in the series, in order. http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/13991541.htm ← (I'll read the series later, when I get home.) One example of a supermarket operator who has figured out that you can make money in the inner city is Supermarkets General (Pathmark), which has made opening inner-city stores something of a specialty over the last decade or so. Their store at North Philadelphia Station is busy at almost all hours of the day. ← We think alike: The third part in the series is about the Pathmark in Newark, N.J., which was the store's first attempt to address shopping in an inner-city neighborhood.

It may be a moot point after all the disagreement on the issue, but I was able to get a link to the original series. The link will take you to the column I described, and on the right side of the page, there are four related links. The first is a sidebar, about transporting the elderly to stores, and the next three are the three main stories in the series, in order. http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/living/13991541.htm

Sorry, Carrot, didn't see this post before I started jumping up and down on my soapbox! Thanks for remembering and offering such a kind mention. Since the series ran in 2003, I'll have to ask the techies for help putting up a link. I'm still an old-fashioned, ink-on-paper kind of gal.