Honkman

I wasn't talking about two years if interning (for which you need a J-1) but spouses who wanted to volunteer for free for one or two days a week and got in trouble visit out the necessary visa.

Actually voluneering without the correct visa isn't that simple. As a former postdoc I know many cases where other postdocs moved to the US for 2 or 3 years for their postdoc and their spouses had to wait for a long time to get the correct visa to either have chance to work or just to do some volunteering. You can of course try to do it without a visa but if you get in trouble don't expect to work or even travel to the US in the future.

I agree with Jenni that having a blog might help you. Since we started our blog about 1.5 years ago we documented pretty much all our homecooked meals by camera and most of our dinners in restaurants. For the restaurants we have a small notepad to make some notes about particular dishes (but making a photo of the menu often helps also). At home we often start from reipces out of our larhe cookbook library and we make some notes next to the recipe if we make any changes. For us it is nice to be able to have a much better "culinary" memeory through our blog but also to share it with family, friends and also readers. Through our blog we have made over time quite a few conatcts with other people interested in food and restaurants.

percyn - could you give some backround information about you ?

I wouldn't say that the places serve pretty much the same - Georges has very good seafood dishes, I would avoid 9-10 ( recent tasting menu was a huge disappointment of mediocre dishes). Are you willing to drive outside of LJ?

I just bought squid recently at WholeFoods in La Jolla and it was good quality $4/lb. Another option is Ranch99

We haven't done it but know other people who phoned in before and ordered the Poularde cuite en vessie as extra course for their tasting menu. Hopefully you will enjoy Benu, I have to admit that it was of our biggest disappoinmemts of our last SF trips. The food was OK but too many misses, service very rushing and some of the worst we had in recent years. The restaurant lives a lot from his FL history and wouldn't get this good reviews if he would be an unknown chef doing the same.

Not sure if I would agree with that. For us it is definitely not about the chicken stock. Actually we normally dilute the stock we are using quite a lot so that you hardly taste anything from the stock in the final risotto. Risotto for us is about the rice and any additional flavoring components we add to the risotto, e.g. asparagus, dried porcini etc.

I don't think that the book is for the daily use during the week but even there are a fewrecipes. On the other side most of the recipes are notthat complex that you can't do them easily on a weekend day -it's a very practical book.

Most Ranch99 shops have a large selection of different kinds of sesame oils and the not toasted ones are quite mild in taste

Just received the book today and briefly looked through but it looks really good and as regulars at Pizzeria and Osteria Mozza it's great to see many well known dishes we will be now able to replicate. BTW, a second book I received today which is hardly mentioned anywhere is "Odd Bits" by McLagan covering all unusual parts of the animals - another very good book we will use a lot.

Just comments on Chowhound which weren't very encouraging to expect an interesting book. Seems to be more basic than I expected.

Nobody expects very unusual ingredients and techniques but staff meal books can still have very interesting dishes - the Chanterelle one is a good example. Will be interesting to see which way the El Bulli book goes

How complex are the dishes ? I don't expect El Bulli level (or even close) but some of the few comments I read so far sound like that these are sometimes very simple recipes for beginner level.

I did the same and ordered in the UK.

I saw that his recipes are in grams. I hope they don't use the 2 months until the book will be published in the US to convert it to cups etc.

Is it already available ? I thought it should come out end of November.

Yes, keep them coming. Great read.

I hope so but I think he takes a bike, not the train. The one pic is on his own webpage http://www.spencerspantry.com/Spencers_Pantry/My_Food.html

I think it is ScottyBoy

We have more an European approach and always buy every or every other day day (we don't like buying fresh stuff in bulk or freezing stuff as it decreases quality) so know what is in season at that time. At the same time we have many cookbooks we like as inspiration for cooking and tend to have shopping lists based on the recipes we would like to use as a starting point.

It's a good way to try different ice cream flavors but they are not really new. We had them in our supermarkets for the last 2-3 years.

Chicken and Crab Callaloo - Caribbean version of Gumbo. Every part of the Caribbean has its own variation, here we tried one from Trinidad and Tobago with rice, crab, chicken, ham, bacon, okra, spinach and coconut milk (and a few other ingredients).

Beside Barn Diva we really enjoyed Scopa in Healdsburg.

Oh dear.......... That kind of a statement puts icebergs down my, uh..."bathing suit area". Look, Mr. JR Shaul, I have but two requests for you, and I really want you to consider them--you don't have to follow up on them, (although it would be ideal if you did) but I really want you you to consider them, O.K.? The first is to "know the enemy". Please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top, get a a job in a restaurant. Just for a month. Walk the mile in the man's shoes before you judge him, O.K.? Everything you do in life is experience, and you can really use this experience, especially if you want to continue writing about the hospitality industry. The second is to print off this entire thread on paper and stuff it in an envelope with a note on that envelope to be opened in 3 year's time. If, after that time you can open the envelope and read it's contents and can critique your comments as well as all the others, then the world is a good place. If you can not open the envelope and refuse to read the thread--including your posts, well then, the the world is a bad place. All I'm asking is to consider these two requests. I don't necessaryly agree with your first point that you have to work in a certain in industry to understand it and judge it but it definitely helps. But I agree with your second point and found the first quote from the OP pointing towards a general problem in this discussion - somebody is taking himself way too serious and seems to expect that things have to be done only his way.