MaxH

Thanks for posting that recollection, MichaelB. A striking vignette of an independent winemaker. Probably many people know the following, but I thought to comment that the class of policy MichaelB encountered about winery visitors -- -- isn't unusual for small wineries, if my experiences in the US and other countries indicate. It was the rule even in the Napa Valley a few decades ago. Not always exactly as MichaelB encountered, but generally no assumption that it was proper for customers to drop in and take up employees' time without some arranging. Despite this, serious visionary winemakers are famous for resonating with more-than-casual fans, as MichaelB found out. Many artisanal wineries are small family businesses and traditionally didn't expect to do retail sales, offer non-trade tastings, etc., much as they'd like to.* In some places where several wineries are co-located nearby, I've long seen them share resources for those purposes. When they're further apart, as with the 60 or so Santa Cruz Mountains wineries and their sometimes bizarre up-and-down Doctor-Seuss geography, the trend in California the last 10 or 15 years is to organize public "passport" days where they all open up, which gives visitors access to many wineries on one trip. *(Even true of renowned but still small firms, in Burgundy for instance.)

A great deal of that information is now omitted because it's been found to be erroneous or irrelevant ...I referred to specific background science related to absinthe, which hasn't changed, and was available (and also in popular absinthe introductions) before, for instance, Ted Breaux tried pre-ban absinthe, or you or most people now posting on feeverte.net were commenting online about absinthe. (I.e., "Newer enthusiasts.") No, but my source referred to extraction of herbal principles by infusion, exactly the point of discussion. It happened to arise in non-liquor-making context. (Evidence yet again, by the way, that wide reading pays unexpected rewards. :-) The newer enthusiasts I was referring to are the distillers ...who are reviving the knowledge laid down by their predecessors...Yes, you mentioned that already to my use of the phrase, in which context I explained that it was off point, although certainly creditable. I was describing absinthe introductions written by people who embraced the subject in recent years.Some particular questions: I know about thujone's significance in absinthe, and the separate point has been made that specific measured absinthes (both pre-ban and carefully reproduced) contain little thujone, a point we can take as established, I hope, without further repetition (though you also know, I assume, that thujone can be distilled). Question 1. [Hiram May 10 2005, this thread]: "Amount of thujone is an issue ... That's why we try to keep people from drinking homemade steeped concoctions: they're poisonous." Why do you call homemade steeped absinthe attempts "poisonous?" 2. Besides legal considerations (i.e., it's salable legally in more countries), does low thujone content per se impart benefits to a quality absinthe, compared to a hypothetical absinthe of equal quality but higher thujone? 3. Ted Breaux is on record as crediting Barnaby Conrad's book for interesting him in absinthe. What got you interested?

Even beyond Spam itself (which does ironic or tongue-in-cheek advertising in recent years, credit where due), the larger product genre that it belongs to gets some play online. The following is old news from a couple years ago, I apologize if you saw it already, and I may have posted it before to eGullet: -- Subject: Horribile dictu! The Potted Meat Food Products Corpus A milestone in my gastronomic education. A co-worker handed me ("YOU will like this") a sheaf printed from the following Web site and subordinate links: http://www.pk.org/pottedmeat.html Initial photo of current canned products is eloquent enough (Armour Pork Brains in Milk Gravy, said to have 1200% the US RDA cholesterol limit, crowds a can of Bronte Lamb Tongues) but it gets better. Flint River Ranch definition of "Meat by-products," the exact industry meaning and regulatory history of Mechanically Separated Poultry. Very well written. One of the links (the Potted Meat Food Product Tribute Page) describes a dialog with Armour Star Products, contacted for the purpose. I'm reminded of H. P. Lovecraft's stories of knowledge better undiscovered; or of that documentary on the bagpipe, with accounts of initial horrified English reactions to the instrument ("... It is a Thing from Hell -- a Thing That Should Not Be ...") Bon appétit. -- Max

What she said! Good portrait, Rebel Rose. (Probably the extreme a bell curve that includes many more moderate examples.) Yet I can testify the existence of exact fits, first encountered in the second half of the 1980s. (I don't know if anyone has started offering tours yet, but here in silicon valley it would be possible. Sort of like when I visited friends at the beautiful Duke University campus early last decade and they asked if I wanted to see any sights, and I eagerly requested "Deconstructionists," so they pointed out the desk of a currently fashionable professor in that specialty, though he was gone at the time.) The term "collector" is also used in different ways. Sometimes I use it to mean people who buy wines they know will need time, and who park ("collect") them until use, even if they cost $5 and aren't meant to be shown to anyone or sold. I used the word that way on amazon.com when commenting about Elin McCoy's biography of Parker last year, and a later reviewer seized on my word as if it meant something else.

Sarsaparilla root itself was an original flavoring for root beer although most of the recipes in my source use other roots and barks. (I wouldn't be surprised if the drink started as a mild medicinal or tonic. So many drinks did, liqueurs especially, when herbs provided most available medicines. Many familiar flavoring herbs have mild specific benefits, such as carminatives or gas reducers, and are listed thus in older technical reference books. Kola-nut extract recipes are listed as medicines in the book I quoted above; today kola, or "cola," syrup still is used against mild nausea, effectively I gather.) The "Ayer" recipe above refers to "Ayer's sarsaparilla," no details on the firm. The proportions FYI are Sarsaparilla root 10 parts, yellow dock root 8, licorice root 8, buckthorn bark 4, burdock root 3, senna leaves 2 [for coloring?], black cohosh root 2, stillingia root 4, poke root 1, cinchona red bark 2 [a quinine source, both flavorful and medicinal], potassium iodide 4 [? suggesting inland location, iodide being used instead of plain salt sometimes against iodine deficiency -- I'm only guessing. That's unnecessary in coastal areas of course because it's in the soil and plants]. Made up with a little alcohol and glycerin, syrup, and water. Other recipes included the components I cited earlier and/or cassia, clove, etc.

Some modern experiences of root beer are regrettable and depart from the drink's roots (pardon me), when the stuff is simplistic and wintergreeny. Some root beers I grew up with were very different from what you get now from nationally dominant commodity soft-drink producers. The stuff was a big deal 100 years ago, the de-facto national soft drink. Different people used different herbal recipes. A popular formula book from the 1920s gives a few of them, typically founded on sassafras bark or its oil, licorice or anise, and wintergreen oil. (The most complex includes five other flavoring roots and two other barks.) Circa 1970 I remember we would get a decent extract that was sold in the supermarket. You'd then add water, sugar, and yeast, and ferment it. This gave a very gentle soft carbonation along the lines of a classic ale, and a slight viscosity like an ale; an insignificant trace of alcohol (as in fresh bread or ripe fruit juice -- bubbles being the object of the ferment), and a subtle, slightly tart flavor, very satisfying. Today I occasionally try root beer and all I taste is gross carbonation, lots of sugar, and wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate), presumably synthetic. That's a flavoring and classic herbal liniment long used also in skin medications and "medicated" cough drops. (Edited to add: It was commonly called Sarsaparilla in its heyday, rather than root beer. The long recipe I cited is from the Ayer company and was used in its advertising, according to the formula book.)

Don't get distracted too far by assumptions even beyond mine! I did mean only bitter A. absinthium (basis of absinthe liquors and their name). "Newer enthusiasts" referred to tutorial authors, not absinthe makers. I paraphrased authoritative 1940s comments, not on liquor manufacture but on extracting chemically related species, presumably applicable. (Beyond that I'm loath to discuss that detail even "privately," with so much home-brew "recipe" experimenting already. It trivially illustrated my larger point about info that's in older mainstream publications, but not in recent online introductions.) Again: I'm no absinthe connoisseur or maker and am creating no new information. I comment from watching the subject some (30-some) years. Much online information on the hobby sites is excellent: tasting notes, cautions to newcomers, commercial absinthe info, information on current absinthe manufacture, refutation of weird new practices (burning sugar cubes, careless home recipes). Absinthe is an intriguing subject that moved from the back burner to the front in the last few years. During the long back-burner period, though, absinthe remained intriguing, getting some popular and scientific attention. It appeared in far-flung mentions, it has connections to other drinks and herbs. For the last 18 years, the standard US introduction has been Conrad's book (after Delahaye's L'Absinthe: Histoire de la Fée Verte, 1983). Broad recent changes to this picture were the emergence of new manufacturers, and a growing, enthusiastic hobbyist world. A side effect of these newly active communities, which is a fairly standard side effect in special-interest communities, is conventional wisdoms they foster. People long following absinthe literature, when they see a new tutorial, FAQ list, etc., will notice what parts of it rehash standard sources, what's new (a lot is new), and what's missing. Recent manufacturers and hobbyists have labored (in the footsteps of their predecessors) to dispel popular misconceptions about absinthe. In the process, I notice, they've retained a few, just a few, myths themselves. (I don't say things like that without documentation in depth, as some people know already. But a mythos or body of assumptions can be tough to spot if you happen to've already bought into it. As I've been reminded, when I raised these issues with some more zealous of the current absinthe hobbyists I've encountered.) That's my only real criticism of the recent online writing, and it's specific, not general. (Perhaps also a tendency to more citations of themselves, and less of their antecedents, than is usual in objective tutorial writing.)

Hi slkinsey, and thanks for adding further info to this anecdotal tasting comment, likely generally true. Now to play devil's advocate for a moment: There's a technical trick to doing the infusion of this herb that renders the extract much nearer the distilled version. I'm paraphrasing from a mainstream 1940s source. That's a fairly trivial instance of various pieces of public information missing from recent, well-intended online tutorials assembled by the newer enthusiasts of this beverage, including on the sites cited above (though those tutorials are sound and concise as far as they do go). However, the eagerness to distance distillates from infusions, even if it generalizes slightly, is surely well placed with the practical infused products the tasters describe.

First, Doc, thanks for the helpful synopsis on Brounstein's contributions. I agree completely, rich (I posted other price examples recently here). More data points in this correspondence arising from last month's "Old School Napa" thread:25 or more years ago, US wine writers grumbled about a trend to double-digit California Cabernet prices. Another digit has crept in since then. About 25 years ago (I just checked) I paid $8 for current-release Stag's Leap Wine Cellars S.L.V., $9 for Raymond, $12 for Clos du Val, and $19 for BV "Georges de Latour Private Reserve," 1976 (which by the way, drank excellently a year ago). $15 for Ridge Monte Bello (1980, ordered pre-release in '81 at the winery, then as now). With a nominal inflation factor (CPI) of 2.23 since 1981, equivalent 2006-dollar prices are $18, $20, $27, $42, and $33. Obviously some old-school Cabernets have risen more, but not always by much. (The BV and Ridge for example sold lately for twice the 1981 price, inflation-adjusted.) Wasn't that Jordan's first? (I was a latecomer, I started only with their 77.)

Yes, thanks JohnL: as I wrote, that's the generic sense of "cult." Discernible from the separate, current industry sense of "cult" also cited. (Observable by anyone who wants to; quotations below.) Phrases used by fans of "cult" California Cabernets (I just did a tiny search) include "giant fruit," "blockbusters," and "next big thing." Other features separating these wines from the tradition of premier California Cabernets, compared at similar stages in the wineries' histories, are disproportionate prices (multiple $100s currently), also high prices and scarcity even when the wineries are young and the wines lack aging track records. (In contrast, when Diamond Creek was fairly young, "rich" here paid $12 for a Cabernet in 1981, equivalent to $27 now). Also, we can't overlook another historical peculiarity of recent "cult" wines: extreme praise (numerical "points") from one critic (RMP) who was not a factor before the 1980s and was widely known to the public from about the 1990s. People should follow his own written advice, develop their palates, and buy what's good, unless they are seeking "the next big thing" for its own sake. That's my take on it. -- Max -- Cal Cult wines ... Like Harlan, Screaming Eagle, et al. (Mark Squires) Napa Valley cult winemakers Araujo Estate Wines and Harlan Estate (Jancis Robinson, in praise)

Come on, Busboy. If the brand-name wines are expensive, seek out good wines that aren't brand names, or fashionable. Don't go after the wines everyone else is chasing. (Chasing, in some cases, simply because other people are chasing them, or because of being told to chase them.) It leads to absurd extremes discussed here before, such as offerings of $60,000 magnums of famous 60-year-old wine that (by the way) was not bottled in magnums. This is why consumers need to develop their palates. That's what countless sincere wine consumers and writers have advocated for decades. Then you can buy by the experience in the glass, not by the brand name. (I'm reflecting for instance on the last 20 years of excellent lesser-known or lesser-appelation Burgundy purchases for $20 a bottle retail or less, which provided lots of pleasure to lots of people. I doubt you could have gone anywhere and looked up these wines in a list when they were on the market, and if you could, they'd have been more expensive for that reason.) Good hunting! -- Max

Haven't read the NYT piece, but I did enjoy some of those wines (which, indeed, became rare and expensive although I don't know exactly when that occurred). As to what these wines "started," Doc: again not knowing content of the NYT piece, 1968 or 1972 were more or less the middle of the evolution of the modern (that is, post-Prohibition) California wine industry. (Always remember, on an even longer view, that California had a substantial wine industry in the 1800s, whose peak of 800 wineries was surpassed in the post-Prohibition era only after 1990). But again just within the world of premium modern California wines, the boutique wineries that began in the 1940s, Martin Ray and the Pinot Noir experiments, the world-class California Cabernets of a sort of golden age in the 1950s and early 60s woke up many wine geeks in and out of California, accustomed to serious European wines, and these preceded Diamond Creek. (In 1981 I remember that the legendary 1955 Inglenook Cabernet -- Inglenook was a leading artisanal producer before being bought by a larger firm and becoming known instead for dating-bar Chablis, as one critic then put it -- this wine, drinking magnificently at age 26, sold at auction for the celebrated, unprecedented price of $12k/dozen or $1000 a bottle or some $2200 in 2006 dollars per CPI. A friend who had bought it in quantity in the 1950s, because it was good, could serve it even though few of us would have gone out and bought it at the current 1981 price.) Diamond Creek may qualify in the generic sense of "cult" though then it's not a pioneer, having extremely high-profile antecedents like the '55 Inglenook. There's a second, recent (1990s) sense of "cult" that the wine industry uses and seems to understand pretty widely, as anyone can verify at will if they do their homework; the Diamond Creek would qualify if it fits the de-facto meaning of that sense of "cult," which Florida Jim spelled out not long ago. Many serious earlier California Cabernets that paved the way (again: Ridge, BV G. de L., Heitz Martha's, Stag's Leap, etc.; various Inglenooks of course) don't fit that newer sense of "cult" and weren't sought by the broker I mentioned here who called for "Cult California Cabernets" to meet particular recent demand.

Hey, JohnL, you're right to cite my casual examples of modern California "cult" wines, I don't claim expertise there. Yet there's no denying special use of that term in recent US wine discussion to group several labels. (Thus a firm I know queried clients a few years ago for "cult" California bottles to re-sell, and named the usual suspects.) BTW I've seen some good-value Kistler wines also. I experienced one of their Chardonnays, I think, slipped as a ringer into a blind white Burgundy tasting by experienced Burgundy fans, which came out near the top. (I liked it blind, and therefore bought some.)Other cases above support my point: Cabernets from harvests late 1980s forward became known in bottle in the 1990s, the era of unusual price appreciation by new California offerings. "Old-school" in this discussion means successful wines existing circa the 1976 tasting. (Further, in correspondence last week I mentioned that today's "old-school" Cabernets occupy a continuum hardly novel even in the 1970s. Including 1935 Simi, 1955 Inglenook, already legendary 25 years ago; 1970 BV Georges de Latour, 1974 Heitz Martha's.) Whose?

Here's someting I've posted elsewhere in the past. Many of you will remember from a few years ago a line of ultra-hip and allegedly ultra-revealing glasses, "Les Impitoyables." A few of us wine geeks were in copacetic spirits and it hit me -- "Les Impossibles." (Must be pronounced French, like "leh-zam-poss-EEbl' .") Wine glasses in the shape of Klein bottles (a Klein bottle has a continuous surface, inside and outside merge -- can't hold water). More form than function, it's true. But surely they could fetch a high price anyway with skilled marketing. They're also of a kin with one modern French cookbook I read with ultimate chapter "Recettes Impossibles," older recipes demanding illegal or extinct ingredients, therefore you can't possibly make them.

Two cents' worth on this big topic: There's brisk business in counterfeiting prestigious wines. I've seen instances. It's brazen with rare wines of high name recognition (thus burlesquing the everyday prospect of buying by label rather than taste). An extreme case is a legendary wine, 1945 Romanée-Conti from Burgundy. People who've tried the real stuff say it's a truly great and historic wine. However, many more bottles reportedly have been sold than were made (two barrels, 600 or so bottles). Reportedly no oversize bottles were released, and this is hardly secret. Yet one expert says that at a random time nowadays you can find offered online two to four magnums (double bottles), "and in a good month, a jeroboam." (I checked a mainstream online wine site and instantly found two magnums, asking over $50,000.) I've heard of them appearing elsewhere too, at retailers. The expert's comment implicitly argues something about due diligence by these sellers.

Hi JohnL. I see these assertions you've posted (repeatedly) with evident sincerity but I don't know where some of it comes from. There's no real misunderstanding of the phrase "cult California wines" on online wine fora today (it denotes wines Florida Jim described in his experience: Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Kistler, etc. -- with mailing lists, multi-hundred-dollar free-market prices, often relatively short histories). These wines can't be confused with the classic California Cabernets jbonne wrote of, because many of those classics are still made, so you can compare them side by side. In earlier decades when the now-classic Cabernets were newer, there was no parallel situation (with hype and mailing lists and high prices with short histories). Why cloud these distinctions?

Yes, some time ago. Steven Sullivan worked at Panisse (if I remember, he was a Berkeley student around then) and then in 1983 with his wife Susan opened the bakery which proceeded to supply P. and other restaurants and the public. (Later, satellite bakeries, Steve Sullivan on Julia Child's program, and today you can do a Web search on "Acme Bakery" and find references to a US "artisanal" baking industry giving some credit to Acme. More, with recollections, here.

Hi hzrt8w, those are indeed known as good sources for dim-sum. I will add (since you did not mention it) that they are part of a relatively recent "Ranch 99" chain mall development (several of which, many of them older than that one, exist around the Bay Area). Also, what is now (full name) Saigon Seafood Harbor was previously much longer known, for decades, as a venerable independent east-bay restaurant, the White Knight. (Some people still refer to the site as the White Knight.) Don't slight Oakland's Chinatown! Frankly I'm surprised not to see more about it recently in this thread. The district is right downtown, it specializes in tea houses (i.e., dim sum), and has probably more variety, and demonstrably much more history, than the Richmond / El Cerrito Ranch-99 complex, which also is a few cities away from Oakland. The Chinatown area is roughly bounded by Broadway, Webster, 7th, and 12th. Legendary Palace (7th and Franklin) is considered by some experts, who have compared them repeatedly, to surpass anything around the particular Ranch 99 complex mentioned here. Of course your tastes may vary. But there's much more to Oakland's Chinatown than just questions of parking (possibly moot anyway depending on time of week, or how close you are staying). [Edited for a spelling error]

That is my impression, though you know them better. (I have also experienced some fans of those newer wines being readier to identify them, than to compare them, with the old-school premium "California Cabernets" of international reputation.) No, and he has a deep reputation as an independent critic of integrity. (There was a remark I'd like to quote to that effect, from a compelling source, but it was private.) In fact the prominent disclaimer on his newsletter urges readers to judge wines for themselves (i.e., develop their own palates, like the people I cited above). The key factor working here therefore may be how some consumers actually use these ratings, and the consequences for the industry. (You saw Haeger's 1998 article, I'd guess, which presented some objective data.)

Hi Jim -- Note that threads here included some important issues unwittingly surfaced in revisiting the "Judgment." (Note, I gather that Jim's "just heating up" refers to a particular measure of hot. It seemed to me already in 1976, decades before most mailing-list brands, that plenty of people were interested in premium California wines; simultaneously some California Cabernets that "established" the region in the 1960s and 1970s still sell, with just moderate real price increases today, as cited upthread.) But on to some of Jim's main thoughts: That's widely acknowledged, including by winemakers or producers, who have money on the line (Jim cited only one of the examples). It's a point most anyone (except maybe some zealous Parker fans who dislike it) can confirm to satisfaction. However, it's not the universal approach by premium California winemakers. Some of them (who even predated today's mass critics) made reputations on palates of diverse wine fans who judged for themselves; such winemakers are outside of "points;" others cheerfully aim for the same today. Note that Jim's remarks refer newer California Cabs named above. We are talking about products of high price, not the run of the mill. I'll add my own experience that the more classic or "old-school" premium California Cabernets both are built to age (it's a signature feature) and do so well. The 2006 re-tasting reiterated this, but it was old news even in 1976. A popular 1976 California wine book (written before the Spurrier tasting) has a full-page photo of 1935, 1945, 1955, and 1965 California Cabernets, all currently (1976) in "mature good health," while a 1975 lab sample "promises to live in the great tradition."

I thought it was a decent piece, jbonne. (It researched beyond current chatter and assumptions, unlike a few I've seen lately.) The piece shines light (not always welcome, I've found) on the identity of what it calls Old School California Cabernets, and their differences from younger premium Cabernets prominent since the 1990s. The article underlined prices around $100 for some of the old school, though I think it omitted to mention that this is not far (e.g., factor of 1.5) from what many of them already sold for 25 years ago, inflation-adjusted, to repeat a recent point. Or that magnitudes of $100 contrast to newer wines several times higher. I mentioned before a common observation (echoed by just about everyone in the wholesale and retail wine business that I ask, here in N. Cal., not to forget Florida Jim) that Cabernet fans of longer experience gravitate less to new cult wines; these customers still buy "old school" California Cabs. Finally (though the geography may seem subtle from thousands of miles away!) the piece's Napa theme regrettably excluded the 2006 tasting's winner (and advance favorite to win in 1976), Ridge Monte Bello (from the Santa Cruz Mountains), a, if not the, classic old-school California Cabernet by many opinions, young and old. (It sells, to advance purchasers, for $65, which is what it sold for 25 years ago, inflation-adjusted.) A small reminder that top California wines aren't limited to Napa, and never were .* -- Max -------- *“California’s best table wines, whether white or red, may be expected to come from the Santa Cruz Mountains, from the Napa Valley, and from Sonoma County.” -- Schoonmaker and Marvel, American Wines, Duell, Sloan and Pearce (New York), 1941.

Though certainly good news for the author, I wonder if such a movie would also be good news for public understanding of California wine and its history. Please keep in mind that I haven't read the book, and am not referring to it here at all. Rather, I'm thinking of the potential for more mythology of the kind (cited here in related threads, "French Resistance" and "from michael bauer's blog") in recent glib media accounts of the re-tasting. Those accounts (surely penned by non-wine-specialists, generally) are already detaching the event from its history and broader context. I wonder what Hollywood will do with it, therefore.

A criticism I've heard (casually) is that few French people were among the tasters in the re-enactment. Interesting to read Shanken complaining of organizers wanting "to attract attention for themselves and the wines involved were their puppets." By the way, in the original ("French Resistance") thread, if my reference to mythology was unclear to anyone, I meant the narrow way that the recent tasting was typically reported in mainstream media that I saw. These gee-whiz reports could easily give readers an impression that the 1976 was the first or largest blind comparison of similarly styled French and California wines (it was neither, as demonstrated earlier here and in my postings about Gault-Millau). The stories might even give some people an impression that age-worthiness of solid California Cabernets was an open question, not seriously tested until the re-enactment (despite decades of documentation to the contrary). Only to the extent that reporting creates notions contrary to reality is it mythmaking.

Tend, yes; but it depends on which English. Friends from "commonwealth" countries, when they warm to this subject, love to complain that North American English (US particularly) softens its "t" sounds, for instance at a "par-dy." "Doufu" is nothing to an accurate rendering of "tamari" (subject of an earlier thread, possibly here). Or to the mirth and back-slapping and demands for encore that greet innocent foreigners (not just the English-speaking ones!) garbling the word "Gouda" in the Netherlands. (I spoke it as "goo-da;" locals were delighted, wanted to hear more, claimed they'd never heard such a word before). Both the strongly-aspirated H at the beginning (not a standard English sound) and the "ow" vowel of the accurate, or NL, version, are new to many anglophones using that word.

Nota bene: There FYI is a constructive example of a journalist who knows Panisse. (Small digressive cross-reference to long Panisse thread here.) When I first ate at Panisse in the 70s by the way, the prix-fixe was $15 I think (roughly $60 in today's dollars), and Panisse did not yet have a high profile; also I was fairly young. Many people report dining there earlier, when it was as low as (?) $6, again different "dollars" of course. For years, at the peak of its fame, dinner cost $40. All of this refers to the restaurant (i.e., the downstairs). It helped to popularize prix-fixe menus in the Bay Area. Part of the distinction of the café, when it opened somewhat later (upstairs), was departure from this format which had been (and as you see in the quotation, remains) a signature of the restaurant. End of small digression. Back to the Laundry and associated venues.