Honkman

So you can't get the extended tasting menu for dinner at Per Se ? It wasn't a problem at French Laundry and they actually prefered itcompared to lunch.

Not very good - if you want Thai food in SD uour best options are Sab-e-lee and Siam Nara, both are decent but not great but still much better than Saffron

We felt that the cocktails couldn't compete with "real" cocktails you would get a good/decent bar but somehow they were OK for the more "playful" evening, and yes they tended to be on the (very) sweet side. Your spot prawn dish with pickled daikon and a very delicate ocean broth sounds very interesting.

Full review and photos: http://twofoodiesonejourney.blogspot.com/2012/06/evolve-cuisine-san-diego-explore-your.html Evolve Cuisine (San Diego) – “Explore your Senses” Tasting Menu Trends in the food world are no different than trends in other parts of life. Some of them evolve over time and become part of the mainstream food world like “farm-to-table”. Today hardly any restaurant doesn’t use some kind of play on the theme of farm-to table to describe their approach towards ingredients and dishes. And even though the concept gets overused by now it also describes a pleasant development of a stronger consciousness of restaurants and customers alike towards a more thoughtful approach regarding sourcing of ingredients. Some other trends get so overhyped that they become more of a stigma than description so that they slowly fade away and only might reappear under a completely different premise as it happened with molecular gastronomy. One of the big buzzwords of the restaurant world in the 90s with pioneers like Ferran Adria, it became more and more a cuss word for restaurants who didn’t understand the original intend but forgot that the quality of the final dish is key to a successful restaurant not the abundant use of new fancy techniques. Over time many of the techniques and tools used during the molecular gastronomy heydays became standard tools of many advanced kitchens like, sous-vide, vacuum sealer, different stabilizers and enzymes and are used today without much reluctance. Chefs using these modern tools understand by now that these are just tools to achieve a better dish and not their main focus. This new attitude was also captured by the seminal work of Nathan Myhrvold and his team who wrote the book which labeled this field – Modernist Cuisine. We have seen quite a few restaurants in San Diego using tools from the modernist cuisine arsenal and incorporating it in very impressive ways, like at Blanca, Georges and Kitchen 1540 by using for example sous-vide, liquid nitrogen or transglutaminase to name a few. But at the same time none of these restaurants strongly advertised their use of these tools as they were just aids to achieve their final dishes. And so it was just a matter of time until the first chef in San Diego would use a more “direct” way to clearly advertise his work as part of the Modernist Cuisine movement – Evolve Cuisine. Evolve Cuisine is the brainchild of Chef Daniel Barron. We first heard about Chef Barron when we read about his work at Anqi in Costa Mesa which is an Asian Fusion restaurant that also offered special molecular gastronomy tasting menus at their chefs table. He got his start into the culinary world through the American Culinary Federation Apprenticeship Program at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Michigan before he worked successfulyl in a number of restaurants in Nashville (Mad Platter), New York (Cesca) and Atlantic City (Donald Trump’s Premier Casino Restaurant). More recently he moved to San Diego to take a position as Executive Chef at Blue Point Costal Cuisine where, similar to Anqi, a special molecular gastronomy tasting menu was offered on request beside the regular standard menu. Finally beginning of this year he decided to be able to create dishes without any restrictions in a conventional restaurant setting and started Evolve Cuisine to focus on the “culinary intersection of modernist cuisine and fresh, organic fare”. Chef Barron is working at Evolve cuisine together with Pastry Chef Jeff Bonilla, who is best known in San Diego for his work with Cups and as Executive Pastry Chef at Kitchen 1540, and Mike Yen, mixologist who worked at Nine-Ten, Avenue 5 and Kitchen 1540. Evolve Cuisine is at this point not planned as a restaurant but as a catering service which uses the currently highly popular pop-up concept to promote its ideas, dishes and philosophy. The most recent incarnation of the Evolve pop-up was focused on “exploring the senses” with a 7-course tasting menu at Fixtures Living. Fixtures Living is during the day an interesting place to buy furniture for kitchen, bath and outdoor but not the first place you think about for a pop-up restaurant. As it turns out the space is very well suited for such an event with its few communal tables, several small booths and bar. It’s a beautiful open space which allowed a lot of interaction between the guests. The open kitchen gave everybody the chance to see the chef and his team preparing and plating the different courses. Amuse Bouche 1: Duck confit ravioli The night started with a reception and three amuse bouches prepared by the three cooks helping Chef Barron throughout the night. The first one was a deep-fried ravioli filled with duck confit. The ample duck confit had a good but delicate flavor which was easily overshadowed by the fried pasta dough. The amuse bouche would have been more successful if the pasta wouldn’t have been deep-fried to let the duck confit shine. So the dish had mainly the ubiquitous flavor of deep fried food. Amuse Bouche 2: Smoked duck breast If there is one kind of utensil which symbolizes best what went wrong with molecular gastronomy it is any kind of syringe – unwieldy, awkward to use in a restaurant setting, doesn’t add anything to any dish and should simply be forbidden to be used by any chef. This amuse bouche proved the point as the idea of combining smoked duck breast, bing cherries and coconut milk was interesting but the execution lacked and it was hard to get a good taste of all the components. Amuse Bouche 3: Seared Yellowfin tuna For us clearly the most successful amuse bouche of the night – Conceptually a simple dish with some seared tuna and a yuzu based aioli but the flavors of the fish and the aioli nicely came together to form a very tasty bite which we would have liked to have as a larger portion. Cocktail 1: Tequila shooter Mike Yen also prepared two excellent small cocktails to go with the amuse-bouches during the reception. The tequila shooter resembled visually a hefeweizen beer but also the flavors reminded us of this class of beers with its slight fruitiness and subdued tartness. Cocktail 2: Cranberry-lime Cosmopolitan The Cosmopolitan was slightly on the sweet side but nicely balanced by the encapsulated cranberry and lime juice. A good play on this classical cocktail and we couldn’t resist to ask for seconds. 1st Course: Smell – Crab consommé, sweet pea, truffle For this dish we were instructed to pour the broth over the peas and pea shots and stir everything. By this, one created a kind of chowder with a wonderful mix of truffle and crab aroma. The flavor of the liquid resembled the heady aroma with a very delectable taste of the crustaceans which was never overwhelmed by the truffle flavor. The balance between both flavors was impressive. The peas delivered a welcomed textural counterpoint and made this dish to one of the highlights of the tasting menu. 2nd Course: Sight – Sculpin, honeysuckle, red chile Sculpins, also known as scorpion fish, are very unusual looking creatures and even though we weren’t served a whole one this dish was a good example for mildly flavor fish. This piece of fish was lightly coated but the crust didn’t interfere with the flavor of the sculpin. Both sauces, one of them characterized from Chef Barron as an Asian-inspired pesto, accompanying the fish had some Asian influences and the red chile added some heat to the dish. The dish would have benefited from another component, like a vegetable, otherwise it was too protein heavy and felt one-dimensional. 3rd Course: Sound – Lavender, pork jowl, mustard Some grassfed beef, smoked, sous-vided and then seared, was the foundation of the dish. It was combined with pork jowl, starting point of guanciale, mustard green and a lavender based vinaigrette to yield an impressive salad which only had the “mistake” of being too small. The pop rock made from mustard were a nice gimmick but didn’t add much to the dish. 4th Course: Touch – Chicken liver, ahi, pumpernickel, peach With the controversy around foie gras in California and a few protesters somewhere outside Chef Barron decided to rename all foie gras into “chicken liver” for the evening. Here the foie gras was incorporated into a panna cotta which still had the characteristic taste of the foie gras but at the same time made it particular light. Pairing foie gras with ahi is quite unusual but due to the lightness of the foie gras panna cotta this combination worked really well as the foie gras didn’t overwhelm the fish. The pieces of peach brought some burst of fruitiness and sweetness and completed the dish. Cocktail Intermezzo: Acid rain Mixologist Mike Yen introduced another one of his creations midway through the tasting menu. In addition to having a nice flavor profile with strong notes on lemongrass and some sweetness from the pink cotton candy rose which slowly dissolved in the cocktail the visual aspect of the cocktail was also entertaining – once you poured the cocktail over the small rocks in the glass you created some “fog” from the dry ice. 5th Course: Taste – Beef cheek, uni, fava beans This course showed again the advantages of sous-vide cooking. Instead of braising the beef cheeks which would result in tender meat with a more fibrous texture cooking it sous-vide gave an equally tender meat but with a much more satisfying texture resembling a steak. The beef checks were paired nicely with some grits made out of hominy and pumpernickel and a sauce created from uni and eel as two main components -a strong dish and one of the highlights of the night. 6th Course: Sensory overload – Duck confit, spot prawn, blackberry, horseradish Chef Barron described this dish as using every part of the duck – the spot prawn was filled with duck confit accompanied by some seared foie gras, dried duck sausage and a blackberry sauce. Even though the different components were executed well this dish also showed what happens if you are using too many techniques just for the sake of it. The dried duck sausage didn’t add anything to the flavor and had a distracting texture but would have been much more enjoyable if it wouldn’t have been unnecessarily dried. This dish also was again too protein-heavy and felt unbalanced, some non-protein components would have helped the dish. 7th Course: Dessert – Watermelon, prosciutto, basil, love & break dancing Pastry Chef Bonilla mentioned that he wanted to capture different parts of summer and the dish indeed included variations on ingredients which are associated with summer and its grilling season – grilled corncake, candy prosciutto, caramelized goat cheese, lemon air and watermelon semifreddo. All components of this dessert came nicely together and created a great finale of the tasting menu. Especially the watermelon semifreddo was exceptional and so it was no surprise that an extra portion of it was successfully requested at our table. We went to this tasting menu from Evolve Cuisine with little expectations and were even a little bit skeptical if we would witness an evening where technique trumps flavor and creativity. But we came away quite impressed from this night and enjoyed the whole experience a lot. Starting from the location with its communal tables which created a nice setting for interesting conversations to the professional but yet pleasant service to the good pacing of the menu. But most importantly the food presented throughout the night turned out to be creative, well executed and used all kinds of techniques just trying to achieve the best flavors for any dish. It was good to see another new chef in San Diego who could bring new creativity and culinary momentum to this city which recently lost some of its best chefs. If there could have been perhaps one improvement to this tasting menu it would be that Chef Barron tended to cook quite protein-focused but those dishes which had more vegetables and other components, like the consommé, mustard green salad and beef cheeks, were the highlights of the night and hopefully he can extend this to all of his dishes. Evolve Cuisine positions itself as focusing on modernist cuisine and even though they use, like many other chefs, modern techniques advertising themselves in this direction might limit their customer base. Buzzwords like modernist cuisine might attract a few foodies but still discourage many other potential guests and it also doesn’t do dishes of Evolve Cuisine justice enough. They should instead describe themselves as what they are – a team of very talented chefs focusing on developing creative, well executed dishes exploring new flavor combinations. Even though Evolve Cuisine won’t have any pop-up events until fall we are already looking forward to visit them again in the future and take part in their culinary journey.

Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini by Elizabeth Schneider might be something you are looking for

avaserfi - great looking dish as always but I am curious about the plate you were using for the dish. Do you have a photo of the plate and where did you buy it ? It might look like one I am trying to find for some time

Pizzeria Mozza (LA), Pizzeria Bruno, Caffe Calabria, Blue Ribbon Pizzeria (San Diego), Pizzeria Ortica (OC)

Pork and tomatillo stew with rice and lime-spiked sour cream

Whoa, whoa, whoa... Who do you think funds most studies on things related to consumer goods? Not a lot of people are sitting out there conducting studies on foods & materials for the heck of it.... it is usually people with a profit motive and talk about "self selecting"... corporations have the most to gain from self selective research. I've was an executive at a consumer product company that sponsored lots of research... and have seen the self selection first hand. Seeing a bunch of "positive / no real risk" studies, funded by corporations with very little research done by organizations not tied said corporations doesn't give me the warm fuzzies... say for example you have dozens of Tobacco industry sponsored studies suggest there is no proof of the link between smoking & lung cancer.. but a single government sponsored study suggests otherwise... I am am going to er on not giving the corporations the benefit of the doubt... just sayin' Profit motive and commerce are the reasons you live in a house and have a computer instead of residing in a mud hut. I would suggest not pretending like they are forces of evil. Also, the government that you seem to trust and think is both good and competent has killed, extorted, stolen and lied more than all the corporations in the world combined but don't let that get in the way of the string of logical fallacies in your post. Any chance you could back up some of your "claims" with actual facts/evidences beyond just repeating Foxnews propaganda. It's obvious that you have very little clue how research in industry and academia(government funded) is interwined and that with industry research alone we wouldn't be as advanced in many areas, e.g. IT, biotech etc. etc. And just to look into the food area and to see how many recalls (often enforced by government and against the interest/will of the commercial companies who would like to hide any problems with their products) we see every month/week from commercial companies shows that it is very naive to blindly trust commerce (which also means you shouldn't trust blindly government but the world is not only black and white)

If they are only looking for the parent compound it doesn't say much about how long potential metabolites may stay in the body. Also tissue accumulation is possible and would give you similar results for the urine concentration without eliminating the compound from the body

Only if you count bloggers (which brings us back to the argument about who is a journalist/writer vs. blogger)- otherwise less and less qualified food writers

@ Frogprincesse Completely agree on everything - it is astonishing how the quality of restaurant "reviews" in San Diego dropped over the last few years once they started mainly to print blogger reports ( and I am pretty sure that is not an issue only in San Diego) which are often horrible written and sound more like PR material from the restaurants. I can't remember the last time I read a even decent review anywhere especially after Naomi Wise died.

Its pretty common practice with text books and science books, which this pricy beast more closely resembles. Agreed. At that price level it is quite common with science books (and I would call MC one) to publish errata etc.

Full review and photos: Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Travel time – the best time to indulge in one of our favorite hobbies. There is hardly any day when we don’t talk about our next potential trip, and for us arranging and planning a journey is already part of the fun. First we will have long discussions where we should go next going back and forth between new destinations we haven’t visited before and revisiting places we liked a lot but never feel we have visited extensively enough. Once we decide on a place the next question circles around how we will get there – driving/flying directly or should we travel slowly with several stopovers to get to know even more locations. But the most extensive planning is always around the time at the destination itself. Starting with finding the best hotels and reading many travel review pages the most time is spent on finding the most unique points of interest and best places to eat. There are many different ways to explore the culinary scene of any city – starting from discussion boards as Chowhound and eGullet, local newspapers to the numerous food blogs every part of the world seems to have by now. And so it is rather easy to come up with a very long list of interesting restaurants covering a wide range of cuisines for every city, but the hard part is to decide how to prioritize this list to make a final decision on the restaurants. As much as we like to explore new places there are a few cities we visit quite regularly – Los Angeles and Las Vegas are fairly close to San Diego and we go to them, especially Los Angeles, many times every year. One city which isn’t as close by but we really started to enjoy the moment we visited it for the first time several years ago is San Francisco. Over the years we kind of lost our heart to San Francisco and hope to live there at one time but until then we try to visit the city at least once a year. There are many attractive features about San Francisco far beyond just food but the vast culinary scene of the city has always attracted us and makes the selection of the restaurants for each visit fun and painful at the same time. We always try to find the right balance between the many different ethnic restaurants often with unique regional places, e.g. diverse Italian restaurants from different regions, old-established places, like Chez Panisse and high-end places with unique tasting menus. On one of our last trips we were contemplating a number of places with more conventional tasting menus to add to our mix of restaurants for that particular trip. Some of the restaurants we were considering were Gary Danko, Campton Place or Murray Circle but in the end we decided to go for the 9-course tasting menu at the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton. One of the aspects which attracted us to the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton was its chef Ron Siegel. He has a quite interesting and impressive background with many diverse influences throughout his career covering several well known and influential mentors. Born in New York he moved as a child to San Francisco and started to work as a butcher at John’s Town and Country Market in Palo Alto when he was 16. During the next several years he worked at several different jobs outside of the culinary world like construction and maintenance but finally decided to focus on his culinary passion and enrolled at the California Culinary Academy. In 1991 he found his first mentor with George Morrone, opening chef of Aqua, and worked under him for two years as a line cook. Morrone was also responsible for helping Siegel to find a position at Daniel in New York under the guidance Chef Daniel Boulud. It was here that he met one of his key mentors with Thomas Keller who was in the process of opening the French Laundry and hired Chef Siegel as the opening sous chef. The successful start of the French Laundry facilitated his first position as executive chef at Charles Nob Hill focusing on the fusion of French and California cuisine. After five years he moved to Masa’s in San Francisco as the executive chef before in 2004 he took over the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton. Throughout his career Chef Siegel had a strong foundation from French cuisine which he combined with different other influences. Perhaps the most unusual one, Japanese, came through the one event which made him famous far beyond the close circle of foodies – becoming the first US chef in 1998 winning Iron Chef Japan in a battle using lobster against Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai. All these features combined let us hope to be in for an exciting and unusual tasting menu at the Dining Room. The restaurant is located inside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco which opened 20 years ago but is located in a more than a century old building. The hallways inside the hotel towards the restaurant are fittingly decorated to match the history of the landmark building. The interior of the restaurant continues the theme from outside and looks very much like a restaurant from the 50s or 60s with very old fashioned décor. Once we entered the restaurant we significantly lowered the average age of the guests... Even our seats had covers which we had last seen in one of the old movies. Overall we weren’t expecting that the Ritz-Carlton and its restaurant would be outfitted overly modern but were still surprised how old fashioned and partly also worn everything looked. Pomegranate Martini and Old Fashioned As always we wanted to start the night with some cocktails but that caught the restaurant a bit by surprise as they didn’t even have a cocktail menu/list but were willing to mix us something. The pomegranate juice gave the martini a good balance between sweetness and some sourness. The old fashioned was one of the better versions we had in quite some time. This cocktail often tends to be unbalanced either focusing too much on the interplay of sugar and bitters or the bourbon. In this version all three components could easily be tasted but at the same time worked perfectly together to be a true cocktail where the sum is greater than its parts. Amuse Bouche 1: Pastry, white bean paste Somehow this amuse bouche appeared like a reminiscence to the famed Gougères at French Laundry but with a nod to Asian influence due to the white bean paste - a simple but nice start to the tasting menu. Amuse Bouche 2: Nantucket scallops, shaved fennel Good interplay between the raw anise-flavored fennel and the sweetness of the scallops. The fennel also had a nice textural contrast to the soft scallops. Amuse Bouche 3: Poached quail egg, prosciutto, white truffle, brioche Classical breakfast pairing of runny egg with some prosciutto and white truffle shavings. Lightly toasted brioche sticks to soak up the white truffle infused egg yolk – unfortunately the egg yolk was completely set and not runny so that a key component of the dish was missing. It was quite disappointing that a kitchen on that level had problems to serve a poached egg. 1st Course: Sashimi of Kampachi, yuzu gelee, asian pear marinade This dish clearly showed the Japanese influences from Chef Siegel. Flawless Hawaiian yellowtail with its mild flavor and buttery, tender texture was paired with the delicate sweetness of the Asian pear and the unmistakable complex citrus and floral flavor of yuzu. A dish you could also find in a better sushi place. 2nd Course: Abalone, shiitake mushrooms, chard, dashi broth Abalone harvest season in California has very tight regulations due to the dwindling population over a long time and so you don’t see it often on restaurant menus. Abalone had a mild slightly sweet flavor with a not overly rubbery texture. The dashi broth enhanced the maritime flavor of the dish whereas we hoped to get some bitterness from the chard but it was hardly noticeable and didn’t add much to the dish which appeared a bit one-dimensional. 3rd Course: Black cod, elephant garlic, shortrib ravioli, watermelon radish Pairing braised meats with fish is getting more and more common in recent times and to avoid that the braised shortribs overpower the delicate black cod Chef Siegel tamed the braised meat by using it as a filling for the ravioli. The pasta acts as a buffer between the flavors of the meat and fish and allows both of them to shine. The elephant garlic added a very mild garlic flavor to the dish whereas the braised watermelon radish just offered some texture to the dish. 4th Course: Lobster, marina di chiogga squash puree, sunchoke chips, red wine shallots The tender lobster and the squash puree paired nicely but both ingredients have naturally a sweet component which rendered this dish on the overly sweet side. The shallots brought some welcomed slight bitterness but overall the dish was missing some balance. 5th Course: Hot foie gras, huckleberries, brioche, rome apple juice with longpepper A large piece of foie gras with the wonderful buttery and livery flavor one expects, expertly prepared with a slight smokey, crunchy exterior. The sides covered the well known spectrum of sweet ingredients to counteract the richness of foie gras but stayed only within established culinary boundaries. More and more chefs try, especially in tasting menus, to present unusual pairings of ingredients to explore new culinary areas. We wished that Chef Siegel would have tried something more unusual here otherwise this dish felt like a foie gras dish we had in many tasting menus before. 6th Course: Quail, salsify, pomegranate, matsutake, Madera sauce One of the dishes were we saw some attempts to bridge French and Japanese flavors. Quail and salsify with the Madera sauce were classical French cuisine whereas the matsutake mushroom, even though often picked at the US West coast, is strongly associated with Japanese cooking. The strong, meaty matsutake flavor went well with the quail and the pomegranate seeds added a nice tartness and some texture. Overall one of the stronger dishes of the night. 7th Course: Beef ribeye, celery root, porcini mushrooms, sancho pepper reduction Another dish which was very well executed on a technical level with perfectly medium rare and tender ribeye but paired, here with porcini mushrooms, celery root, potatoes, as we have seen it many times before. The sancho pepper reduction didn’t really add much to the dish and so it felt like a déjà vu with prior tasting menus. 8th Course: Cheese selection, bread, condiments Normally we expect in such high-end restaurants that it is possible to select a few cheeses from a cheese cart. Unfortunately here at the Dining Room no cheese cart was to be seen and the selection was made for us. The bread was just regular baguette with the condiments just a few slices of apple and some almonds – one of the more disappointing cheese courses. Intermezzo: Persimmon sorbet, carrot granite Refreshing and unusual combination between persimmon and carrot with the vegetable providing the sweet component whereas the fruit added some tartness. A surprising palate cleanser which we wished to be much larger. 9th Course: Chocolate-layered cake, vanilla ice cream, pineapple puree, gingerbread cake, pear sorbet, caramel sauce Dessert came with two variations of cake - both of them moist and not too heavy but also not too far from the expected norm. The dessert was lightened up by some fruit sorbet and puree but overall followed the theme of the savory courses – well made on a technical level but it felt like we had the same course in many tasting menus before. We finished the tasting menu with an espresso Mignardises: As much as we had hoped for a cheese cart we were surprised about the large selection on the mignardises cart and were able to taste a large selection of their very good sweets. Ritz-Carlton hotels are not really known as edgy, modern places but once we entered the hotel we were surprised how old-fashioned everything looked and started wondering how much the Dining Room would fit in. Part of the fascination of every great restaurant is not only the cuisine and service but also the ambience which should form a coherent unit with the philosophy of the chef. Chef Siegel’s reputation was letting us to expect a tasting menu anchored in French cuisine but with modern interpretations, often including Japanese influences, and brimming with creativity. The technical execution of many dishes revealed indeed the strong French cuisine background of Chef Siegel and was mostly on a high level, perhaps with the major exception of the failed poached egg. But what we were completely missing were the creativity and surprises one expects from tasting menus at this level. There were sometimes sprinkles of Japanese influences by the use of some Japanese ingredients but mostly the dishes had either a clear French or Japanese background without many efforts to create any new directions. But even the many dishes with French influences were staying very close to the expected norm without any surprises. There was hardly any dish throughout the tasting menu were we didn’t comment how they reminded us of dishes we had eaten at other occasions before, everything felt like repeats. It speaks volume that the two things we remember most from this dinner were the intermezzo, with its unusual and successful combination of persimmon and carrot, and the huge mignardises cart – both are normally only a side notes of a tasting menu. Besides the uninspired dishes the service at the Dining Room was far from its very good reputation. Prior to our visit we often read about the flawless and polished service at the restaurant but that was different from our experience. Starting from a very rushed service at the beginning which slowed down after we asked for a more reasonable pace to servers which didn’t really know what they were serving (and had to help each other to get together all components of a dish which they were serving) the service was simply not very professional. But worst was when the maitre’d started to bad-mouthing restaurants when talking with other guests. He compared other one star Michelin restaurants in San Francisco to the Dining Room and in particular slandered about One Market and its “horrible food and service” which was quite ironic as we just ate there a few days before and had a much better experience than at the Dining Room. It didn’t came as a surprise when some time after our visit to the Dining Room we read that Chef Siegel was closing the restaurant to renovate and reopen it under a different name and different, more casual, concept. On one side we particularly enjoy restaurants which offer tasting menus and so seeing another one closing or changing its direction wasn’t encouraging. But at the same we felt that the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton was clearly past its prime and was in need of a readjustment. Perhaps this new concept will give Chef Siegel the opportunity to go back to his roots of creative cooking.

Yes, Bosch rhymes with wash

Over time our focus has shifted regarding the purchase of cookbooks. At the beginning when we started cooking we were interested in finding books which covered a broad spectrum of cooking/techniques/ingradients - there is quite a large selection to choose from and our cookbook library grew fast. Once we got much more experience in cooking we are much more selective in what cookbook we buy - mainly focusing on either restaurants or chefs we are particular interested (e.g. Eleven Madison, Volt) or very specific regional ethnic cuisines (e.g. books covering specific small regions in Italy, France etc.) - here the selection is much smaller and so our cookbook library is growing much slower over the last several years.

Honkman, I really pains me to read this about NINE-TEN. I would really give them another chance. I've had many great meals there including this one documented last summer. Jason Knibb, the head chef (teamed with his pastry chef, Jack Fisher), recently faced Bobby Flay in Iron Chef America (battle caviar). Unfortunately, he lost but I thought his performance was really solid. Our prefered way to eat in any restaurant is always a tasting menu and since San Diego has only a rather limited number of restaurants which offer tasting menu we always look forward to try new ones out. Unfortunately 9-10 was by far our worst dining experience on 2011 in SD (and we eat out 2-3/week). The restaurant showed so many different mistakes/weaknesses throughout the night that it is unlikely that it was just a bad night. The food was boring, uninspiring and lacked creativity and was overpriced for what you get (especially considering that we had other excellent tasting menus in SD around the same time from Chef McCabe, Schmidt, Martinez). The service was actually beyond laughable (e.g. had to ask for silverware for different courses, had to remind for wine pairing several times, ordered cocktails to drink before tasting menu but got them after second course etc. etc.). It is very rare that we don't go to restaurants a few times but 9-10 was so bad that it will take a lot of time to think about going back. There are many better options for dining in SD.

Braised Turkey Thighs with Onions & Butternut Squash and some German dumplings

I agree with a lot of what you said, but not with this part. There are things you clearly can't do with most P&S cameras: sophisticated remote flash is one of them; changing lens is definitely another. You can get round parallax by knowing your P&S. The only point I can think of beyond which SLR leaves P&S in the dust is well beyond an A4 image size: it's simple resolution and the difference only shows when you blow the image way up. And just to drive the point home, I give you the Sigma DP2s and a gallery of an owner's global samples - you can work backwards from the linked page. (I wouldn't recommend the Sigma and its fixed-focal-length lens for the casual user). ETA: going backwards, you'll find the first significant volume of P&S shots from page 154. It might depend on why you are using a camera. We very recently bought our first DSLR also driven because we were quite unhappy with the quality of the photos on our blog. We mainly use it foodwise for restaurant visits and the capturing of our cooking at home. In both cases the lightning conditions are in general are very dark and don't allow for any kind of flash or other kind of "extra" light source. Since we mainly cook in the evening even at home we hardly have any natural light to photograph our dishes (and the different cooking steps). In addition, (and that is just personal preference) we like food photos of dishes with a certain type of bokeh/depth of field which we haven't really seen with P&S cameras.

If by "narrow DOF" you mean shallow dof like this: It's tough to achieve with a small sensor camera. But can easily be done in post using Photoshop. This works best with photos taken at low angles. Here is Sobaaddict's photo: This is how it looks after one minute in Photoshop: Open your photo in PS. Click on the layers menu and choose "duplicate layer". In the dialogue box click "ok". Click on the filters menu and choose "Gaussian Blur". In the dialogue box choose a number between 5 and 20. Click "ok". Create a mask by clicking on the square icon with the small circle in the middle, at the bottom of the Layers pallet. Choose the "Gradient Fill tool". Place the pointer at the tip of the piece of fish in the foreground (bottom of image), click and drag a straight line to the top of the image. That's it. If you don't like the effect, just undo and place the pointer in a different spot, click and drag up to the top again. I agree that in general the knowledge/experience of the photographer is more important than the quality of the camera. But on the other side once a photographer has a certain level of knowledge/experience there is a clear point where a P&S camera can't compete with the decent DSLR and you can see a significant difference in the quality of the photos. One argument I often hear than is that photoshop wil take care of it but unfortunately this is hardly ever the case. Nearly all photos from a P&S camera which are "significantly improved" through Photoshop always look artifical and have a low quality. And, with all respect, this "narrow DOF" is a good example. "Narrow DOF" isn't just blurring parts of the photo with "Gaussian Blur" and the final photo has not much to do with "real" narrow DOF and looks artifical and obviously photoshoped.

They may not go to McDonalds for simple carbs, but it's precisely the simple carbs that are responsible for making them fat from doing so. Read Gary Taubes. Gary Taubes is a good salesman but not a good scientist.

You could try to use it in a braise. There is one in Daniel Boulud's book "Braise" which uses watermelon radishes with beef brisket and red miso. I haven't done this recipe but was planning to do it soon when i saw watermelon radishes last week at WF. You can see the recipe in google books: http://books.google.com/books?id=sZPERTPwr4MC&pg=PA12&lpg=PA12&dq=%22watermelon+radishes%22++braise+%22Daniel+boulud%22&source=bl&ots=ivkNF7uGCt&sig=TkMMkfGxqteuLYeR8nSjP9eCTqs&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

I think both Wolfert books are quite similar whereas the Pepin books might have some small overlap in recipes but are very different. (Cooking got already much better over the last few weeks - we are close to our old schedule of cooking 3-4 times a week and going to restaurants with our daughter 2-3 times).

Seems that I misread the fat part but the main reason for the difference in taste is still not because of the fat content but the overrun

I don't know what kind of gelato you are eating but good versions definitely don't coat the tongue with fat as gelato has normally less fat than ice cream (10+% vs 7-8%). Another big difference is the overrun of both versions which is much higher with ice cream