johnder

I am the unfortunate recipient of having a house with a female ginko tree. I have to say that if we could afford the 3k it would cost to cut it down, it would be down in a second. It turns the fruit actually contains the same oils (urushiol) found in poision oak, which when touched causes nasty side affects. I need to pass under this tree to get to my front door and doing so makes me ill, I am actually nauseaous when I smell it. Also the oils from the fruit are stripping the finish off our wood floors in the entryway. It really is a hellacious 45 days for us every fall. The tree unforunately -- it's days are numbered. You can find more info here.

Apparently it is offical that Daniel Humm is going to be the new chef at Eleven Madison replacing Heffernan who is moving over to Hudson Yards Catering. Humm is going to EMP from Campton Place in San Francisco. I will be interested to see how the menu is tweaked next year under his new influence. jpd edit: typo Administrative note: Reviews and discussion of 11 Madison Park under Chef Humm can be found here.

While you can probably buy one of those fancy smancy "gourmet" mini blow torches from Williams Sonoma or the like, I much prefer the cheaper bernzomatic torches you find in the local home center. One of these canisters will last quite a long time. You will have two choices, either pure propane, or MAPP gas, which burns hotter. I personally use the propane one.

I went to Kuruma Zushi and it blew me away just amazing. Of course it blew my wallet away as well but that is another story. I used to go to Japonica all the time when I was going to NYU many, many years ago and it was decent, especially for the price, but definately not on par with Kuruma Zushi or even Sushiden on quality.

There is a good show currently on pbs that focuses on scandinavian cooking. They do have a sample xmas menu here. They also have quite a few other recipes on their site. John

I recently installed some xenon mini-track lighting from Juno in my kitchen and I love it. I am using the Juno Trak 12 linear lighting solution. It is basically a very small track light that you can choose the type of fixture you want, either Halogen or Xenon. Here is the link for the various fixtures, and here are the tracks and transformers. I went for the Single Xenon 10W D3.2.0 every 6 inches or so under the cabinet and used some of the remote tranformers to power them. I did a lot of research for undercounter lights and loves that with this solution you can have a mixture of downlights and wall washing by changing the heads and the color of the light is really pleasing. But as I mentioned it was an expensive solution. You can special order them from Lowes and for what I needed (16 linear feet of track, 2 remote transformers and roughtly 35 light fixtures) it ran about 350 bucks.

Wow, it seems the Navy is a very condiment heavy crowd! Look at that selection. John

They don't have a bar menu, it is the regular restaurant menu. You may be hard pressed to have a full meal there for under 60, unless you do a few small plates and desert. I have eaten at the bar quite a few times and it is very nice. If I remember correctly there are only maybe 7 seats at the bar, so if you are going, go early, or maybe call ahead and ask them to set aside 2 seats for you for your special occasion. What about Upstairs at Bouley? John

Wow, that is the first time I have heard that about Gramercy's food. I have always had a consistantly excellent meal both in the dining room and tavern room and having just dined at Le Bernardin I would have preferred to take the money I spent there and have 2 meals at Gramercy's main dining room. Don't get me wrong, I lov

My personal view of pacing is assuming I am having a 7 course meal is something along the lines (based upon a 8pm res) Personally I think you need at least 10 minutes in between courses, especially if they are rich foods. They were obviously firing the dished before we finished our last bite, as immediately when we finished our food our plates were wisked away, new wine server and silverware placed. The food arrived within 3-4 minutes after the previous plate left. Given we spent the first 15 minutes having our aperitif and reading the food and wine menu the actual time of consuming the food was done in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Given we had amuse + 5 courses + cheese + desert + petit fours in that time, the average time of each course is (90 minutes / 9) = 10 minutes including eating time which is insanely fast. Also another pet peeve I forgot to mention is they brought the petit-fours before the desert. john

So we had our dinner there last Friday to mixed reviews. We showed up at 7:50 for our 8pm res and there were quite a few empty tables. Probably was about 40% empty when we showed up. We waited a few minutes in the bustling bar area and were showed our seats. They took us all the way to the back of the restaurant and gave us a table right next to the kitchen door. We didn't think about it too much initially and order some Kir Royals to start. My wife was sitting with her back to the door and I was facing her, and the door. Every 30 seconds the door would open and I would get blinded by the lights in the kitchen. We asked to be moved to another table and after a minute of discussion amongst the captains we moved to the other side of the room. Not so much a strike against them, but not the best way to start, especially considering how many empty deuces there were at the time. Around 8:30 the place filled up to capacity and there were no empty tables. We opted for the $125 tasting menu which consisted of. FLUKE Progressive Tasting of Marinated Fluke; Four Different Ceviches; from Simple to Complex Combination Sake "Junmai Ginjo" Takatenjin This was presented in 4 small saucer dishes and was plunked down in front of us with no description of the dish. We flagged someone down to explain at after we stared at it for a minute of two. While it was good it wasn't amazing. Each saucer held a piece of fluke in 4 sauces each building on the previous sauce. The first was just soy, lime and ginger I believe. The second added sake and chili, the 3rd added lemongrass I think, and the 4th added coconut milk. I am sure there were other ingredients but it was explained so fast I forgot. The sake pairing was nice, considering the asian influence of the ingredients in the dish. Rating 3 out of 10. ESCOLAR Grilled Hawaiian Escolar "Vitello Tonnato" Style; Warm Potato and Celery Salad Savennières "Clos du Papillon" Domaine des Beaumard 2001 I think the waiter realized his mistake and from this point on went into excruciating detail about each dish, so that is a plus for them. I have never been a fan of Tonnato sauces, so this was the dish that didn't excite me very much. But much to my surprise it was very tasty. The sauce was very mild and went extremely well with the potato salad, but I feel it was still too overpowering for the mild fish. Rating 3/10 LOBSTER-LANGOUSTINE-SHRIMP Celeriac Open Ravioli Filled with a Medley of Lobster, Langoustine and Shrimp; Foie Gras Truffle Sauce Mas de Daumas Gassac 2004 This was a winner It was amazing. The sauce was super intense and rich. I just wish I could have found the bread man to get more bread to sop up the sauce. The open ravioli were great and matched well with the sauce, although I question why you would add shrimp to the mix, as that was the taste that was most prominent in the ravioli, washing out the milder lobser and langoustine. Rating 7/10 HALIBUT Poached Halibut "Salsa Verde": Clam Juice, Roasted Garlic, Herb Purée and Lemon Juice; Warm Crab and Raw Matsutake Mushroom Salad Naiades "Verdejo" 2003 This was also a good dish. The Salsa verde was intensely flavorful and complemented the fish nicely. The crab in the dish was lost between the mushrooms and the sauce. It was a visually appealing dish with the color / texture contrast and was probably the 3rd best dish of the evening. Rating 6/10 WILD STRIPED BASS Sautéed Striped Bass; Sweet Corn Purée, Grilled Shishito Peppers and Shaved Smoked Bonito; Mole Sauce Beaune "Clos des Vignes Franches" Nicolas Potel 2003 This was my favorite of the evening. The Bass was served over a puddle of the corn puree and the mole sauce poured around it like a moat. Reading the description on the menu I feared the mole sauce would overpower the fish, but it was quite the contrary. The mole had just a hint of chocolate and red wine and was a nice balance of richness and acidity that complemented the fish as well as the creaminess of the corn. The shishito peppers added a nice kick to the dish as well. Rating 8/10 CHOCOLATE-PRALINE Thin Leaves of Ecuadorian Chocolate Layered Between Hazelnut Biscuit, Praline Feuilletine, Milk Chocolate Cream, with Sherry Soaked Prunes Montilla-Moriles "Pedro Ximenez Solera" Alvear 1927 Now let me preface this by saying I love chocolate and sweet things. I have been know when I was a kid to purchase a tub of betty crocker chocolate icing and just eat scoops of it out of the can so I am used to very sweet things -- this did was too sweet. My jaw ached after eating this dish. I think the actual preperation differed slightly from what is above as the dish I had included two golf ball sized blobs of chocolate ganache. It was so sweet I could only eat a bite or two before I went into a sugar coma. Really, really sweet. Rating 0/10 -- sucked. I didn't talk much about the wine pairing, which we got for an additional 65 bucks. It was a good deal considering the size of the pours, the number of glasses and they were interesting overall. Each wine was matched well with the dishes, which isn't an easy task considering the variety of the ingredients in each dish, so it was a great deal. Overall I would say I am slightly dissapointed in the evening. With tax and tip we ended up walking out of their about 550 bucks lighter and I would have preferred to each twice a Gramercy for the same money, or 7/8th's of a meal at Per Se. Aside from the inital service snafus (seating, no bread, no description of the first dish) service was good. The water was always filled, the napkins were always folded when we got up, chairs were always pulled out. This isn't too amazing given the sheer number of waitstaff we saw that evening. There must be 1 person for every 2 tables there, which is one of the reasons it was annoying to have to ask for bread after my plate was empty for 10 minutes. Another thing that was annoying was the pacing of the food. They really made it an effort to turn the table. We had a cocktail, amuse, 5 courses + cheese and were given the check a little more than 2 hours after we sat down. Towards the 4th course we were trying to slow down as much as possible, but as soon as we took our last bite 5 minutes later the next course was given. I may be spoiled by the pacing at Per Se, but this was too fast. john

Ah I have the non didgtal one. It is a old school one.

I have a question for those with the Lauda immersion circulators. The one I got off ebay didn't come with any directions and I can't seem to find any online anywhere. I though it was simple enough, but was having a problem with the circulator being cut off at certain points. While I know the big knob (I my picture above) controls the temp, the small one when pushed starts the circulator pump, but that also has a temprature scale on it as well. It seems to control the temp at which the circulator cuts off. The problem is that when it cuts off the only way I can see to start it again is by pusing the small knob in again. I thought I had this solved by just setting the small knob at a higher temp than the actual larger temprature knob, but that seemed to negate the actual temp setting on the large knob. (ie: I had the large knob set to 64, and the small one set to 80 [so the pump didn't cut off], and I walked away and came back and the water was at 80C!) Anyone have instructions on this thing?

Given they were both vegetables that broke down easily under heat (mushrooms and scallions), they did offer a nice aroma and texture to the dish. I would think with heartier veggies you would want to go with a higher heat, but in this case they were fine.

Hah! I knew I missed a step!

So I was feeling energetic and tried a pork sous-vide[ dish tonight. I had a small tenderloin, some scallions, a serrano chili and some small crimini mushrooms, so I created a small packet with all that and a few pats of butter. I tossed in some S&P and a few szechwan peppercorns. I apologize in advance for the photos, I am still getting used to the camera and the flash modes. I stuck the whole packet in the water bath. I had it set to 64C and kept it there until I got an internal temp of the pork at 64C. After I took it out of the packet I have to say it looked not very appetizing. So it went into a hot pan with a dab of butter and canola oil for a sear. Much better! Finally, the plating. I served it with some oven roasted acorn squash that was roasted with some hazelnuts, hazelnut oil and a touch of honey. The scallions and mushrooms from the bag were served on the side, and the meat drizzled with some of the cooking juice. While it was good overall, pork (at least this preparation) isn't my favorite way of eating pork. I have done salmon and chicken so far with amazing results. I think I am just partial to a nice pork roast. The meat was extremely tender, but even with the sear was missing that roasted taste. Maybe I should have tried searing it longer.

Excellent, I am going to give it a shot tonight. Do you remember what temp you cooked them at?

I use the drawer method myself. I have hotglued a magnetic knife holder in the center of the drawer (running front-to-back) in the center of the drawer. Holds all the knives in place and prevents them from banging into one another. Running out of room though. :-(

Has anyone tried using a pork-tenderloin SV? I know the color may be slightly off-putting to people, as most people cringe away from pink color of it. Not me personally.

Oh man I am getting hungry! I can't wait. HEE. We did the $95 prix fixe. I had, as I recall, the Kumamoto oysters, then the poached lobster, then the monkfish - it was prepared differently when I had it than the way they are showing it on the website now - and I think the chocolate praline for dessert. I am unfortunately blanking on the wine - it was a French white that I'd had in France, just lovely. Went with everything, too. One of our group had the skate, which I also remember as being just amazing. K ←

Did you do one of the tasting menus or a la carte? The chefs menu looks awesome -- I am worried about our ability to walk straight afterwards if we did the wine pairing. It could be worse than when we leave Pegu. John I think you'll enjoy it - I went for the first time a couple of months back. Haven't posted about it because, for the first time, I had a had time finding words to express how very much I enjoyed it. Let's just say this: from the time I entered the restaurant to the time I left, everything - food, wine, service, atmosphere, EVERYTHING - was absolutely as good as it possibly could have been, the top of the mountain, can't climb any higher. I left there thinking "now I understand the difference between three stars and four stars - that was definitely four stars." ←

It is pretty safe to say I haven't been to another bar recently that had Creme de Violette behind the bar.

Ah that would explain it. I have had Mango before and it is definately hit or miss. Their noodles tend to be good overall. Hopefully they improved somewhat. I will have to give it a shot at least. John It's owned by the Mango Thai people, which I would consider "sickly-sweet" at best. Beautiful room, though - perhaps they have a better cook here? ←

While I haven't been to Le Bernardin for quite a few years, my wife and I decided about a month ago to give it a shot for our bday dinner(s) next week. Given we have eaten at all the other 4 stars recently, we decided it was time to try it together. Boy I am happy we made the reservation when we did. Given the press recently about it in Zagat and more importantly Michelin I am sure they are going to be booked like crazy. I just hope they don't raise their prices before next week as a result. :-)

I love Sapporo. I used to work in the Time Life building and it was our defacto lunch place. I tended to only get the ramens during the colder months and stuck with their excellent Katsu Curry which is definately a belly filler. Rai Rai Ken is awesome as well. The trick is going there during slightly off hours otherwise you will be waiting for a seat for some time. Their Gyoza's are amazing too.