kpurvis

I'd have to agree. I think this is another example of Southerners making a dish and then claiming it as our own. For reference, check out the piece that Jane Snow did in the Akron Beacon Journal within the last month or so -- it was on Red Velvet Cake as an Ohio "thing."

How about Cafe Un Deux Trois on 44th? The menu is reasonable and reliable and the location is right. I think they also have a pre-theater menu. If they were willing to branch out from French, I like Becco a lot.

Sheesh, you people with your "jobs" and your "ethics" and your "contractual obligations"... what good are you? What can I say? I dance with the one what brung me. That silly paycheck gets addictive.

Well, so, report? :) Sorry, Doc. My paper gets first dibs. I'll post a link after my piece runs next Wednesday.

Pretty shabby excuse. There's always room for a few hot dogs. Sorry, Holly. You're right, I'm just a slip of a girl. Daisy May's, Pig Heaven, Brother Jimmy's, Amma, City Bakery, a catered lunch, Hearth, Red Flame, Biscuit, Pearson's, Blue Smoke, Virgil's and Whole Foods was as much as I could handle in three days. I'll train harder and try to do better next time.

I'd second the Yocanna River Inn. Especially if you get really lucky and they have the duck hash.

Sorry to pull a bait-and-switch. I promised to report back, but just before I left for NYC last week, I got an assignment to do a story on N.C.-style barbecue in Manhattan. Having to fit in seven versions of pulled pork sandwiches left no chance (OK, no room!) to hit a hot dog stand. I did get to Hearth (soulful roasted foie gras, duck pappardelle and goat milk panna cotta, and tastes of companions' roasted octopus and gnocchi, but my hands-down favorite was the hot cider doughnuts). Also went to Amma. Suvir wasn't in, but the grilled tandoori lamb chops and mango cheesecake were worth the stop. And I ran by Whole Foods quickly yesterday for coconut milk and red lentil soup.

Hey, if you're here next week, I might volunteer to drive you to one. Or at least, to the UHOP.

I'm trying to sit on my hands here. No! No! Stop, typing fingers! Don't reply to this thread. Don't get sucked into the vortex of another wasted debate on New Yorkers and their Southern stereotypes! Get away from that keyboard before you point out that Steve is at Lake Wylie, not Siberia, surrounded by the mega-bucks mansions of Tega Cay. Don't type in a suggestion that Charlotte, a rapidly growing urban area located less than 30 minutes from his "remote cabin," is a city filled with both the expected traditional Southern restaurants and fine dining and shopping worthy of any city its size, as well as sizable ethnic populations from Hmong to Peruvian. Stop, fingers! You don't have time to get into this debate. Just tell Steve it's nice that he's found a fish camp, once a traditional and valued part of Southern life but now endangered. Type that you're glad he's enjoying his stay.

Gee, Mr. Guy, that is a shame. Here in the Carolinas, I could have taken you for a Winky Dinky Dog. It's topped with pimento cheese and chili.

Looks like a Papaya King field trip is definitely in order, so conveniently located near Best Cellars and KAL. I'll try to report back. Other meals already lined up this time: Amma (how could I miss paying my respects to Suvir?) and Hearth, also possibly the Grocery in Brooklyn. So many meals . . . so little shame.

No slaw dogs at Gray's Aw, Holly -- we Carolinians don't HAVE to have slaw on everything. Just on our barbecue sandwiches. And our chili burgers. And, well, OK, we like it on our hot dogs, too. But I'm open-minded. It's that papaya part that has me curious. I remember papaya -- or the smell of papaya -- from when I lived in South Florida and our Cuban neighbors made papaya shakes.

Gee, Dean, I would, but you know how much trouble I've had finding a willing lunch companion in the Big City. . . Among those who voted a preference, it looks like Papaya King gets two votes and Gray's gets one. This is so much more interesting than the whole hanging-chad thing.

On my long list of things to do, I realized I've never hit one of these. On a trip in March, I'm hoping to correct that mistake. So: Is there any appreciable difference between them? I'm staying on West 44th near 6th, but I roam around a lot.

And speaking of getting dissed on "S@C," I think I can speak for many of us here in Charlotte, N.C., when I say: Stop it! We're not all rednecks with mullets, many of us come to New York quite regularly, and Charlotte's real estate is way too pricey for trailer parks. When they said the potential parents were coming from Charlotte, I thought, for a glimmering moment, that they might do something original and real: Have the parents turn out to be bankers. Given my city's position as home of the 2nd and 3rd largest banks in the country, that would be statistically more likely. But no. They had to pander to the country's limited notion of Southerners, once again.

uh.....actually my secret dream is to be a stand-up commedian who entertains the troops.......and gives out recipes here and there, maybe even cooks a meal or two..... i sort of live my life like this even though there is no camera on me so far as i can tell......... Aw Marlena, you're much more Betty Grable than Martha Raye. Maybe Bette Midler will play you in the movie.

I agree with that one! When I'm outed, people treat me like some kind of exotic creature, but they usually spend their time apologizing for not cooking and acting like they have to do penance in my presence. I end up feeling like a priest at a cocktail party: "Forgive me, food editor, for I have sinned. It's been three weeks since I ate anything except take-out."

I'd completely agree with you there, Balma. We had an interesting thread on e-gullet about a year ago (it's probably in the refrigerator somewhere) on first-person in food writing. Cookingwithamy, please don't think you got barked at for starting a thread. I had that same feeling when I first posted. I'd never encourage you not to post, just to be more specific in your question. Rather than "why is so much food writing bad," I wanted you to define what you meant by bad: Imprecise? Dull? Predictable? Repetitive? Food writing at newspapers has a history and that history still resonates. There are food writer/editors who date back to the days when most were home economists by training and weren't hired for their ability to spin engaging prose. And if you really trace our lineage back six or seven decades, we all date to food editors who were adjuncts of the advertising department. Those days are long gone -- thank the lord and pass over the paid press junket -- but memories still linger in some newsrooms and color the perception of food sections as not being "real news," or worthy of "real writing."

Not that I know of, and I perversely hope it stays that way! Journalism school is responsible for most of the writing coming off the campaign trail. I shudder to think what we'd end up with if food writing got passed through the j-school mill. Most of the best newspaper food writers I know came at food writing because they had passion for the subject, and they had considerable background in editing and writing from other news beats. There's plenty of great newspaper food writing out there, if you know where to look. Go back in Nexis/Lexus a few years and look up Joe Crea's writing at the Orange County Register. Or anything, past or present, by the lovely Russ Parsons (don't worry, Russ honey -- who cares if you can cook? You can write me dinner anytime). Or the aforementioned Dara Moscovitz (I'm also a closet Dara reader.) Or the smart stuff by Reagan Walker, Jim Auchmutey or John Kessler at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, or Debbie Moose's columns for the Raleigh News and Observer, or anything by Hsaio-Ching Chou at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I could name many more. What I find interesting is how many of them are examples of people who were writers and editors from traditional "hard news" beats who switched over to food writing because they had passion for it. Maybe that's a good e-g thread: If you could design a j-school curriculum for food writers, what would you do? What would the course material be?

Cookingwithamy, I'm with Fat Guy on this one. A broadside like that is impossible to answer. You're assuming that all writing is bad without defining any parameters. I work for a newspaper with a daily circulation of roughly 240,000. I'm a one-person food staff. Most weeks, I'm doing pretty good if I can string together 10 words that won't embarrass me the next morning. What defines "good" or "bad" is such a wide variable as to be almost impossible to define. Some readers want cutting-edge articles on the hautest food coming out of New York. Others want something fast to make for dinner, in a streamlined format. And still others want warm/cozy front-porch food chat and 10 recipes for biscuits. My mission: To provide content for all of them. There's no way to tell which article will hit with which audience. Last week, I was short of time and wrote a column about vanished food products from my childhood and how so many of them were terrible. I thought the column was OK, no great shakes. When it ran, I got calls and e-mails from readers who raved about it. It hit home with them and was apparently what they wanted to read that week. Was it good writing? Beats me. All I can really aim for is writing that is true, true to its mission, true to my ear, true to that place somewhere near my heart that resonates when I write something that feels close to what I was aiming at. I write 50 or so columns a year, plus another 30 to 40 centerpiece food articles (the ones with the splashy pictures and multiple recipes), and 25 to 30 food news articles. Some of those will be OK writing. Some of them won't be great writing, but they'll get the job done. And maybe 5 percent of all that will be writing that I'll be proud for my grandchildren to see. So, instead of saying "why is food writing bad," why don't you offer us some examples of food writing that you think is good?

Straying a little, the pecan dicussion reminds me of my favorite story about strange behavior outside the South. On my first trip to New York years ago, just before Thanksgiving, we were standing in line in Macy's food hall. The woman in front of us, wearing a fur coat and radiating a certain, um, superior attitude, had a copy of the NYT food section. She got to the counter and asked, "Where are the pecan meats?" The clerk pointed to a big barrel of shelled pecan halves in the middle of the floor. "No, those are pecans. I want pecan MEATS." The clerk told her again they were right there. "No, no," she said. "The Times specifically calls for pecan MEATS. Where are the pecan MEATS?" The clerk finally said, "Oh, those. We're out of them." I always figured she went back to her Park Avenue pied a terre and sent some poor maid on a search of Manhattan.

Praline recipes vary almost as much as the pronunciation (you say PRAW-lean, I say PRAY-lean, let's call the whole thing off . . . ) Usually they are a little gritty, but there are also creamier versions.

The little ones are great for making oatmeal, if you're into the healthy breakfast thing. Use the steel-cut Irish oatmeal. You can have a serving of it ready when you get up in the morning.

By the way: Is this the same Marc Wilson who used to live and sometimes write in Charlotte?

kpurvis, I believe you're referring to SOAR: The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes which has been renamed to RecipeSource! at www.recipesource.com (as ludja posted above) Yes, SOAR, that was it. Thanks. I'm glad to know it's still around.