MaxH

Thanks for the notes, Jim. As you probably know, Clos de Tart is generally vinified in a style (hard, strong, heavy with new oak) requiring unusually long cellaring (I'm reminded of California's Ridge Monte Bello Cabernet in those senses). I'd hesitate to open my 1990s now for instance. Stevenson's encyclopedia suggests 15-30 years as typical range. (When I saw 1996 Tart on a wine list at Dickie Brennan’s Steak House in New Orleans in October 2001 I thought it meant infanticide, arguing for a Burgundy Rescue League to protect them from abuse.)

I put this in a separate topic (it came up in another restaurant's thread and also refers to the recent SF high-end restaurants article). Not the only one, Carlsbad, as you can see here. (I have been posting on FDL's history on other sites and defended the place on another (Squires's wine site) and have posted since 1995 or earlier (BARG), but can't be everywhere. Also, haven't dined at FDL in some time so lack a current diner's perspective. But I did encounter Hubert Keller here and there and gave an anecdote in the linked thread above. ) For most of the last 25 or 30 years if you mentioned a chef "Keller" in the Bay Area, it was likely Hubert Keller from Alsace, who has been cooking continuously in SF all that time, doing guest appearances, teaching classes, etc. I took one of his classes last decade and saw the energy and the spark of simple classy European cooking roots of the sort that Elizabeth David and Richard Olney celibrate in English. Below are Sesser and Unterman in their book on San Francisco restaurants, on Hubert Keller in his earlier Sutter 500. (By the way when that book of reviews came out in 1986, it was still possible for the authors to refer to a Francophone from Alsace as "M. Keller" with the reasonable expectation that people would get it. Today a 30-year-old co-worker with a Stanford graduate education puzzles over the "M." and "Mme." in Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley" novels set in France. Does no one read anything anymore?) 48 words from Sesser and Unterman on Keller's old venue Sutter 500: "Hubert Keller is a three-star chef trapped in a one-star restaurant. He needs a room, a maître d’, a consistently professional waiting staff and a wine list to match his talent and his intensity. Despite these drawbacks, the food here is a fine as any in the city." ISBN 0877013780, 1986. From review in the SF Chronicle. (Sesser and Unterman were I believe the longest-running SF-Chron restaurant critics of the last half century, succeeding Seymour Whitelaw in the late 1970s and preceding the current critic.)

Thanks for the further suggestions, alycemoy. The Ruth's Chris chain had a particular complex history. The original in New Orleans and early clones had very high standards, I thought, when Ruth Fertel was still alive (she died a couple of years ago). I was disappointed with some of the remoter ones even many years ago, and a reliable native food-fanatic informant in New Orleans has mentioned writing off Ruth's even there ("... no longer dry-age their beef ..."). As you may know, Fertel, then a chemist and divorced mother, originally bought the Chris Steak House under contractual requirement to preserve the name. If you have a chance to try it, please report. There's an issue with its Web site (discussed on another forum). It's one of those with thick layers of interface that can throw successive obstacles into the path of readers. I gave up part-way through; one patient reader got through the goop (first asking software permissions to execute who-knows-what on your computer, then requiring you have latest-hippest animation software installed, finally some tedious concept "Intro" -- none of which are necessary for an excellent interface) -- only to find that content he sought wasn't there. Such "trash-oriented" Web presence (as he put it crisply) may have nothing to do with the quality of the restaurant but may have been farmed out, etc.

I’ve searched, slowly, for a solid steakhouse in that area. Not hoping for New York or Chicago or Texas, mind, but if possible, something a little interesting. Below are experiences from 10 prospects, eight briefly and two in detail -- one "bad" (Grill on the Alley) and one "good" (Spencer’s). The Black Angus, aka Stewart Anderson Cattle Company, chain, when opening in western states in the 1970s, seemed an above-average formula at moderate prices. It survives (unlike many concept restaurant chains, characteristic of 1970s area dining by the way, that faded nearly or fully). But by the 1990s, visits to the Sunnyvale Black Angus brought indifferent meats almost grimly served. Some neighborhood steak houses, also moderate, draw regulars, but visits found no special angle. Cattleman’s in Sunnyvale (Ross Drive off 237), Mister Steer in Santa Clara, Blake’s on San Pedro Square in downtown San José. The Outback chain opened a location in Cupertino a decade or so ago and I thought it gave decent value. The forced "G’day" Aussie theme intruded though, and orders were chaos in the hands of very young employees once or twice (haven’t visited in some years). Moving up a little in my opinion, The Garden City, famous card club at Saratoga and Stevens Creek, was known as much for its steak/chop restaurant as for gaming and scandals, 10-15 years ago. I never went for cards, but enjoyed a couple of outstanding steakhouse meals in middle 1990s. (Kitchen was simpatico: learning that my companions agreed to bone-in steaks not just for flavor but to leave me leftovers for stock, kitchen provided with the "doggie" boxes some well-done Prime Rib ends that enhanced the broth.) But the scene evolved; recent reports discouraged revisit. A friend favors Sundance [Mining Company] in Palo Alto, which I thought decent, noisy; sort of a 1970s look (and name; in fact "Established 1974") -- reminiscent of Black Angus when that chain was new. Forbes Mill in Los Gatos, a large bustling place, offered broad wine selection a year ago, highlighting nearby Santa Cruz Mountains producers (Ridge, Cooper-Garrod, Ahlgren, etc.) Such a place by the way can be as expensive as any "high-end" restaurant, when all is tallied. There I got a fine piece of meat and the hobgoblin of steak houses, hokey side dishes. Fresh vegetables accompanied the "à-la-carte" steak, but the "wild mushrooms" dish looked mostly ordinary cultivated buttons and the "pilaf" was an institutional parboiled-rice mix, lukewarm. The béarnaise sauce came, after a second request, late and cool, but was the right stuff, we must count our blessings. (One chef who knows sauces was badly disappointed dining at the Santana Row Left Bank, for example, receiving a hollandaise instead, from a server who then argued with him that it was a béarnaise.) Lately, High Concept steakhouse chains are a growth segment in US restaurant business. In-flight magazines are thick with advertisements for them ("Locations in Denver, Houston, Miami, ..."). A little of this has come to silicon valley, as follows. In the late 1990s a "Grill on the Alley" replaced Les Saisons (an old-style French restaurant) in the Fairmont Hotel, downtown San José. The remodeling laid on, with a heavy hand, Old-Fashioned Hard-Boiled Steakhouse Look. Green-shaded banker’s lamps in the dark leather-covered booths, Cole Porter music, "Hand-Stirred Martinis" neon window sign, separate Martini menu. After it had been open for some time, a visit found inconsistency. My steak was cooked very wrong, and unflavorful; companion’s tournedos were fine. Second visit half-year later yielded decent dishes for three of us but my porterhouse, ordered medium rare, came seared outside, completely raw and cold inside. (You’d get that if you cooked steaks by time, but the time was set for steaks at room temperature and this one was from the fridge.) Andrew Trice has said that cooking steaks to order is tricky in a general kitchen, but this place specialized in them. Oddly, when I mentioned the uncooked steak to the waiter, he acknowledged it and vanished, never to be seen again, deepening the error. (I didn’t pursue it and the steak wasn’t fully wasted -- the stockpot again.) Evidently Sheila Himmel of the SJ Mercury News and other commentators were lucky and missed this facet of the Grill, but two gaffes in a row (and failure to correct one of them) argued a restaurant out of control, warning me away. Spencer’s, in the San José Doubletree Hotel (off 101 at SJ airport) is a Hilton concept that opened there in 2004. I heard of it soon from locals, going actually to enjoy California wines from the broad list. This list has a continuum of prices and is dominantly California. Very many wines are also available by glass, thanks to a large wine-bar cooler-dispenser that preserves partial bottles. So the venue is also a wine bar (de facto if not de marketing). I’d been by it once before to meet someone in the hotel, the lobby then full and bustling, steakhouse to one side, friendly-looking sunken bar-lounge and sushi bar nearby. Open Table (www.opentable.com) takes reservations. On a recent Saturday the near-empty hotel parking lot underscored that it’s a business hotel, getting most of its guests weeknights. Likewise the steakhouse, which had a fair crowd by mid-evening but was not nearly full. The staff we talked to were sharp and solicitous and seemed well-trained. Temporary sommelier Scott Casey, filling in from Arizona, was very helpful, offering details and tasting experience with the wines. He said that he grew up with European parents enjoying wine at meals, and took to wine professionally fairly young. This gave him a depth of insight, obvious on our visit (much harder to get if you come to wine later in life, I think). It also equipped him to deal tactfully with occasional brash wine collectors who like to mess with restaurant wine professionals (an occupational annoyance). We took our time, to pace things out and try multiple courses. First "crusty" onion soups. These came in individual one-liter tureens covered with thick layers of mixed melted cheeses. Mindful of food coming, we sampled the cheese layers, but treated them as lids. The soup had an herbed, lightly sherried broth and plenty of onions. Better balanced, to my palate, than the Left Bank soup formula (so sherried or brandied, it’s cloyingly sweet). After a pause to digest, we ordered steaks and side dishes: broiled beefsteak tomatoes, mushrooms, almond rice (the server warned of large portions for some items and, following his advice, we asked for a half order of the rice, which was about right). We ordered different steaks (which Spencer’s broils) and shared them. My porterhouse was fine and well cooked. My intrepid dining companion’s rib-eye (house specialty), though, was outstandingly flavorful, I’d order it on a future visit. With these steaks came small salads and the side dishes. The rice was rice, mushrooms indifferent; tomatoes were very ripe, seasoned with fresh basil shreds, but covered, like the soup, with heavy melted cheese -- not what I’ve gotten elsewhere when the menu said "broiled tomatoes," but easy enough to remove. Another, long, pause later, for duty’s sake we finally tried a dessert course, the apple "pie." This staggeringly deep-dish assembly had thin crusts filled with flat dried apples and a few raisins, not overly sweet, and arrived flanked by a blob each of ice cream and heavy, lightly sweetened whipped cream. This dessert could serve three. Actually you could make a pretty good meal from any two of Spencer's soup, a salad, and the apple "pie." Or just the "pie" by itself, with coffee or tea. Especially if you don’t have the hours we allocated to this. (Of course, in such premises it may be hard to resist trying a steak.) In this one visit we thought the service solid, steaks excellent, side dishes adequate, and that it would be worth going back just to get that soup or "pie" once more. It was the best experience of those here.

Inspired by the excellent mentions here I visited Uncle Frank’s about 5:30PM yesterday. The place was not yet fully open for business (construction was still underway). Seeing no obvious direct entrance (an "Uncle Frank’s" sign was visible on the ground, at the rear, piled with some supplies) I wandered into the dark bar, where someone saw my confused look and said with a routine tone, "The Barbecue is that way, to the rear." There I found Uncle Frank and personnel, busy amid dining tables strewn with construction supplies and paperwork. Though obviously busy, they were very welcoming and the kitchen was sort of operating. When I mentioned knowing of the place via Internet, Uncle Frank's younger associate was eager to take down the site name. I spelled out E-G-U-L-L-E-T-dot-O-R-G, California forum. Uncle Frank told me of his experience, first cooking barbecue in the South when he was young, then opening locally and cooking breakfasts which was a lot of work for low checks, then discovering the lively market for barbecue in the area and abandoning the breakfast business. Amid banter about Special Accommodations for Internet Customers, $20 and change set me up with a semi-infinite take-out supply of assorted hot smoked meats (with a sampler while I waited). These came with a thick, raisiny sauce and smoked fresh corn on the cob (potato salad as alternative). Rich, wood smoke flavor in both the meats (which were indeed tender) and corn. Very cordial and accommodating folks, obviously fired up with their new business location. Uncle F opined that final work should be finished next week if all goes as planned.

Right. So does Excel. -- Max

Fair enough, LindaJ. My first few years of using a computer for my wines (early 1980s) I used a simple text file. The inventory is now more complex and geographically disparate, and various hyperlinking might be helpful. But I haven't yet found the need for Web-based access to it (sounds kind of scary in fact) nor such things mentioned here as automatic tie-in to the latest critics's view (since the wines tended to be off that radar anyway when bought, for value). I can see how specialized software might be useful if I did want those features. I don't use Excel either; as already stated, I have no horse in this race. Merely an observer.

Is it true that we've lost others? It would be a shame. Italians and Italian-Americans built San Francisco, in part. During a period working at the Exploratorium in the early 70s I commuted on the 30 Stockton bus, informally the "Orient Express" and aptly so, from the sequence of ethnic neighborhoods it traversed. Passing through an Italian-American corridor that always had slow traffic, I remember an older block of offices with decals on upper windows. "Guido J. Lenci, Attorney at Law. Guido J. Lenci, Insurance. Guido J. Lenci, Real Estate." Or similar lines. And of course there were those Sicilian immigrant families that settled in the South Bay and some of them went to SF and did well. Amadeo Peter Giannini (born 1870, San José) and his little project the Bank of America (originally the Bank of Italy); a few winemakers, etc. Never did track down the story of Guido J. Lenci. -- Max

I am basically with jackal10 here (and Daniel Rogov, tho quenelles are unaccountably rare in the US in recent decades, given their frequency in French books, and given that they are not all that hard to make). But I am from the US, where many mainstream cookery traditions and book recipes are European-derived, which means that "dumplings" have meant, traditionally, blobs, not things with wrappers -- though I probably eat vastly more of the latter. Which brings us inevitably to Knödel. That word comes from Central Europe, specifically Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia. Knödel embrace a continuum from basically pastas (Spätzle) to filled dumplings and napkin dumplings (Serviettenknödel), likely called savoury steamed puddings in Britain: dough with flavorings is rolled in a cloth napkin, tied at the ends, and steamed or poached. (If that's too much trouble, Knorr-Swiss sells an instant napkin-dumpling kit in a box. Add water.) These simple foods have been developed over the centuries to a high craft in the region, where I've encountered remarkably savory dumpling accompaniments to wild mushrooms, game, fruit, etc. The US "chicken and dumplings," when well made, is in that direction. Knödel are a pillar in the Pantheon of comfort foods. Anzu and Gifted Gourmet mentioned some of this also. An outstanding book on Knödel culture comes from Austria: Helmreich and Staudinger's Nur Knödel (Just Knödel), 1993, ISBN 3854474350. Stylish monochrome photos and tongue-in-cheek philosophy ("Is the dumpling a Catholic phenomenon?"). I just Googled the ISBN to check it and found that the only hits were from me, but it's a popular book and conveniently bilingual (English and German). Blob dumplings are said to be one of the oldest classes of prepared cooked foods (another, their cousins, being the pancakes in various forms). Cheers -- Max -- max@tdl.com

Not everyone, ademello. Not to take anything from the celebrations of a particular special-purpose product or its fan club, but having no vested interest in selling anything here or validating my purchase of anything, let me cite for the record (the testimonials are on other fora) that many people use the stock Microsoft spreadsheet program, Excel. It's flexible and the data are uniquely portable, since most PC users have the software already. (Don't know about the automatic links to ratings. Don't use them myself.) Beyond that, if any product is indeed "by far the best option" then it's helpful if we can possibly see some information about why, or links to it; dispassionate comparison against real alternatives; etc. This is not a complaint specific to that posting; public online fora tend to bring out assertions. All the best -- Max

Yes, but of what, don't you see? I see this asserted lately, sometimes by people who never even heard of all of the respected, independent US wine newsletter critics of the 1970s (predating Mr. P), critics who offered in essence the same service that he did, excepting the categorical statements and the two-digit number. Though these asserters seldom offer real comparative assessment versus the earlier critics (preferring to intone an increasingly mythical notion of the US wine criticism scene before the breath of fresh air -- often, also before their own experience), there was a real change with his advent: the appeal of the decisive pronouncements and of the two-digit number. As I said, some found these attractive. Occasionally we get penetrating looks at this phenomenon, which are not necessarily negative. But we don't get them from the True Believers.Woe unto anyone who dares question the new orthodoxy. Realities at issue need not even come into play. Stuart Yaniger, in McCoy's new Parker biography The Emperor of Wine, is quoted as learning on the Prodigy online service the unacceptability of questioning Parker’s ideas or methods. Following “dodge” answers from P. would arrive “thirty or forty or fifty emails from the Human Shield ... `how dare you imply the great man is anything but a paragon of honesty. Clearly you are a horrible person and how jealous you must be of the Great Bob.’ ” “Religious reactions” was Yaniger’s characterization. His experience of the Faithful is consistent with mine online for 20+ years, predating Prodigy. -- if you insist on introducing such language; hardly my point.

Yes indeed, Gaucho. Some of us wine enthusiasts wondered in the 1980s how a new wine critic aged in his 30s could presume to write sweeping, decisive judgements about the 20-year aging potential of young wines, given his probable inexperience with same. On the contrary, many of my compatriots seemed unperturbed by this and, if anything, attracted to it. Who can predict ... --Max

I don't know anything about "commercial products" for this but I've been removing labels very smoothly for about 30 years, from many but not all bottles, by exploiting a principle that's been around much longer than that. People who've done much wet photographic printing know it implicitly or explicitly, and it shows up in various places, including I think some of the home "formula books" that were so popular as references in late 19th and early 20th c. The principle is that various gelatinous and albuminous materials tend to be softened by alkali and hardened by acid. This applies to "animal" and other natural glues although it is no help with some plastic-type glues which I have seen gradually increasing in use with wine labels (they are commonplace under tin-can labels and labels for various plastic packaging). Armed with this useful principle I load a batch of bottles upright in a deep pot such as an 8-liter (8-quart) pasta pot. Fill the pot (and the bottles too) with warm-to-hot tap water and add a tablespoon or two of clear household ammonia to the water in the pot. That's a convenient, low-residue source of alkali. Forget about it for a few hours, or overnight; then on revisiting the pot, many labels will slide or peel off easily, very intact (or will have lifted off by themselves), ready for drying on a towel. For a flat label, do the last of the drying between sheets of absorbent paper under a weight, and for a very smooth clean surface, do this with plastic film against the front side of the label and absorbent paper against the back. (I nearly wrote "obverse" for the front side -- as in "obvious" -- common technical or trade talk; but I remembered that lately for some reason in the US people have been writing "obverse" when they mean "reverse" and this has robbed the word of utility. O the times ...) Some labels with synthetic glues will be hopeless for clean removal like this, though the bottles can be dried and passed to the Advanced Methods Department as described by the response with the wide clear tape. Good luck -- Max

I enjoyed sampling these wines but it was a reminder of how much this producer takes the long view, like a classic Bordeaux or Brunello di Montalcino. (Santa Cruz Mountains growing areas incidentally are intermediate between Bordeaux and Piedmont by Winkler's old "degree-day" analysis for grape growing, acc. to Schoonmaker and Marvel’s 1941 book American Wines, for whatever that’s worth.) A reminder of times I’ve opened Monte Bello Cabernet at age 10-15 to find it “young.” Last night, other friends who’ve bought Ridge wines for years opened Zinfandels from across the 1980s bearing the same winemaker’s brief label notes: Likely to develop for at least four years, etc. The wines were doing well at 20. Another feature of the flagship Cabernet is how it steadily sells in pre-arrival to an appreciative public (for about half the final retail price). When I first bought it this way 25 vintages ago it cost $15, not cheap then; lately $60-65 on the same terms. But it can be compared to products selling for a multiple of that, without the 40+ year track record. Nor are there any clubs or mailing lists to get the discounted price, it’s available to all. And though I don’t know if it’s statistically significant or gets public notice, Monte Bello maintains a firm following among wine enthusiasts who have otherwise given up, more or less, on California Cabernets and even Bordeaux, out of trends of the last decade. Cheers -- Max (max@tdl.com)

Ridge Monte Bello Cabernets 1990-2002 in magnum (1.5 L) bottles. Tasted at Los Gatos, California (Manresa restaurant) July 2005. With the winemaker, some industry colleagues, other longtime Ridge fans. (A combined dinner-tasting held by a very long-time Ridge fan who furnished the wines.) The bottles were bought annually on release, kept in a single cellar. An unusual MB comparison because systematic cellaring of magnums is much less frequent than of regular bottles. Overall the wines showed strikingly “young,” even at age 15. (That’s MB for you.) Concentration and balance were impressive, and personalities of different years despite consistent style -- like siblings in a large family. (Winemaker commented later that these wines were explicitly “assembled to be in balance” whether approached young, or left to develop often to later stages, as were appearing already in some of the vintages here.) Quick preference polls asking first and second favorites after each flight showed notable consensus. Not a corked wine in the bunch. (Winemaker discussed cork Quality Assurance. And barrels. And assemblage of wine from parcels. And sundry other matters, as is his style.) Below are more casual impressions than tasting notes, from less focus than in regular tasting groups I attend (samples were not even blind). Notated with cépage in order Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot / Petit Verdot / Cabernet Franc. Letter “T” stands for “Taste” in contrast to smell, and its first appearance marks start of tasting rather than smelling. First group, 2002-1996. 2002 (74/18/8/0): Soft, alcoholic, soft young wood; Mexican-hot-chocolate aromas (chocolate, cinnamon, almond). T hard young wood, but berryish for this group, moderately concentrated. 2001 (56/36/8/0): Wooded, concentrated-fruit smells. T intense and concentrated with rather sweet fruit. Grape jelly. Almost cloying. Powerful young wood. 2000 (75/23/0/2): Toasty nose, dried orange peel, nutmeg or mace. T is on the fruity side, soft acid, some chocolate, tannins mild for this group. Long, young Cabernet finish. 1999 (72/25/1/2): Wood spices. Lumberyard. Sawn wood. Berries. Coffee-mocha. T very rich berry fruit in this one; like a chocolate bar with blueberries. Creamy note on palate, like vanillin. 1998 (70/24/5/1): Striking complex floral, herbal smells. Young berries, mace or jasmine, cinnamon?, marjoram?, coconut. T unusually concentrated; strong acid, hard; oak, cantaloupe. 1997 (85/8/4/3): Port-de-Salut cheese, maybe turpentine. Rich smells, ashy toast. Orange peel? Berryish, raspberry-turnover was the eventual standout smell besides wood components. T again ash toast, fine Cab character, tannins softer than in the’96. (This wine was very popular of this flight.) 1996 (80/11/9/0): Sassafras, oak. Cedar, dark berries -- blackberry? Nuts. (Hazelnut?) T Nuttiness, nutty wood, concentrated, high acid, bits of coffee. Paused for small food course of squab and summer vegetables. Then second group of wines. 1995 (69/18/10/3): Wood smells, youngish fruit. Smells much younger than some of the later years. Bit of nutmeg. T pleasant truffly complexity, wood, notable acid, faintly underripe. 1994 (73/15/9/3): Sweet berry fruit; wood smells. T balance, concentration, tending to coffee flavors. 1993 (86/7/7/0): Rustic, faintly moldy? Hazelnut, and raspberry Pop-Tarts -- a famous exact smell that shows in some wines. T, is the fruit light here? Blueberries. 1992 (80/11/9/0, in 750ml rather than magnum): Highly rustic. Fruit acids. T notable acid, fruit down a little; hard. 1991 (85/10/5/0): Gamy, meaty smells. Ashy toast and hint of sauerkraut. Stilton cheese. T fine coffeeish, truffles, blueberries. (My and the table’s clear favorite of the flight.) 1990 (85/10/5/0): Truffly. Fine, maturing Cabernet aromas. Complexity. T cedary; impressive balance and development. Tannic. Followed by course of roast prime rib-eye beef with fresh porcini, then cheeses. (Later, a little almond cake dessert.) The simple menu was worked out with chef to go with the wines. For more information about Ridge wines, see www.ridgewine.com . The usual routine for Ridge Monte Bello fans is to order the wines at pre-arrival around the time of annual assemblage (from smaller parcels of wine), March-May. Public tastings at the winery are offered during and after the final assemblage, Web site has details. Wines are shipped approximately two years later, then released for retail sale. For background on how Ridge is perceived, particularly outside the US market, dig up Barbara Ensrud’s article “Wine: Ridge at the Pinnacle,” The Wall Street Journal, 18 December 1992. Or cover article by John Stimpfig, Decanter, March 2000. -- Max (max@tdl.com)

The patio offers an additional, "casual" menu at quiet times such as early evenings. I think there's info on the Web site or else call. There is also the back room (PDR) if it is not already committed, however the query refers to a Friday night which may already be busy.

Heathens! Next they'll be putting sweet fruit into bagels. O tempora! O mores!

Is it the restaurants that might embrace diversity, or their customers? For example, my part of the US has long had many Chinese restaurants, operated by immigrant families. Some of these restaurants in recent decades have been markedly good and innovative, with unusual cuisines or specialties. Yet I have seen many US customers stubbornly closed to these opportunities. They will enter a place known for unique specialties, which most everyone enjoys once tried, and these customers will order the same old lemon chicken filet or hot-and-sour soup that they order in every other Chinese restaurant -- as if it were MacDonald's. I talk about this to proprietors, and they roll their eyes and become animated over it. Being sensible businesspeople they do offer the cliché standard dishes, and it pays the rent; but this is not where they take pride, it is not what they will recommend to customers if asked. I've noticed this for 30 years, and it was even more conspicuous around Central Square in Cambridge, Mass., where a steady volume of MIT students visited the lively local Chinese restaurants and you could almost call out in advance the standard five or six dishes they consistently ordered. A principle of interesting dining, I’ve always thought, is that if a restaurant is any good, you do not go in and order your favorite dishes. You order the restaurant's favorite dishes. Some of them show relief and respect when they hear such a request. So (though I don’t know the particular Japanese restaurants cited above) I’m reluctant to attribute cliché menus simply to the restaurants. As in other markets, the businesses may do it because their customers steadily reward them for it.

Thanks for the historical reference, Suzy! Naturally it would be from Mariani. JF Mariani -- though sometimes criticized by locals when he travels outside his home turf to write restaurant-scene articles -- seems superb on Italian-American traditions and their Italian roots. Some of his best writing is genuine historical research. ...As to "French dressing": This certainly meant the sweet orange goop back in my 1960s childhood, at least in my part of the US. Maybe not in cookbooks, but in restaurants and supermarkets. I would speculate that it already meant that in the 1950s.I too think that I saw the red French dressing commercially as early as the 1960s, but its invasion was then far from complete. The standard and long-lived 1965 edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, as mainstream as any cooking source gets in the US, begins its salad-dressings chapter with French Dressing as the prototype, "the classic formula for green salads," a basic oil-vinegar-garlic with 11 variations. That is an example I had in mind from "about the 1960s or earlier." The newer red sweet commercial dressing introduced an ambiguity. Which was absent when the Gourmet Cookbook (1950) began a London Broil recipe "Marinate a flank steak in French dressing for at least 2 hours," making it not the Gourmet's fault if a later generation failed to check the definition in the same book (19 variations there) and got a weird result from using sweetened tomato-flavored salad dressing instead. Precisely the evolution of what's considered "classic," according to what we happened to grow up with -- whether French dressing or "Alfredo" pasta or cookbook authors or whatever -- is what I was getting at here. (The real history, I've often found, makes us re-examine the familiar.) A few years ago (hope I didn't mention this already), boarding a British airline from the US, I was offered a "French dressing" so asked "US sense or British sense" and the steward said at once "I see what you mean, sir; let me check" and came back "British sense" (in which, I feel, the British do have sense). Kind of like the peculiar evolution of the meaning of "entrée" in the US, which has caused similar questions to servers -- "US sense or French sense?" -- another thread, no doubt. Cheers -- Max

Incidentally the reason I was seeing a lot of queries about SF restaurants on far-flung online fora is I think just because people were traveling there. I don't think he wants my business. At another restaurant where G. D. was involved, there was a debacle in the handling of an event, through a manager's behavior that most people would judge outrageous, I think. (Or anyway, obnoxious.) Judge, that is, based on evidence, which was sent to G. D. with a complaint. There was no response, hence my reasoned inference above. Also, the same person was, at one point, reported working at G. D.'s current restaurant. I haven't confirmed that, but I (and some others) will likely avoid doing future business with that specific employee even if we have to go out of our way to do so. (That is a non-Michelin sense of “mérite un détour.”)

This called Paste Cacio e Burro. Alfredo adds a little cream. ← Yes, annanstee, that is the familiar current usage of "Alfredo," in the Americas anyway. But per earlier in this thread, there are some indications that the dish has changed, under that name; that was the question. Just as, for instance, "French" salad dressing in the US no longer means what it did until the 1970s or so (and still does in other English-speaking countries.) When you see "French dressing" in a US cookbook from about the 1960s or earlier, it normally meant some kind of vinaigrette, not something sweetened and flavored with tomato. The term was appropriated.

I wonder how much of this is peculiar to the United States. Paul Fussell the social critic, in one of his books (I think BAD, 1992) complains about insecurity in the US about "people's own decent tastes and instincts" and their need to look instead to Authorities all the time.Also, scores are "easy" for their users. It's easier for a school to check a standardized test score than to really review the applicant. Easier for a university tenure committee to look at quantity of publications than quality. Easier for a moviegoer to look for awards or "thumbs up" than to read about it. Easier to look at a number than read a wine review. I've witnessed this as a phenomenon of the last 20 years mainly. I don't recall the thriving US wine-critic world before then (Tilson, Finigan, Olken/Singer, Vintage, etc.) ever having that problem; much less emphasis then on "final score." Finigan even wrote a diatribe (1981) against the county-fair medals that had filled some of the role then. (In 1981 the "100-point" system was virtually unknown in the US, RP who popularized it was still a new critic with a local following, he does not appear in the 1984 summary of national wine critics in ISBN 0520050851.)

The "spat" goes back a while. Here's a reference I got from the public online wine forum active in 1988. Presumably there was much less history between them at the time (maybe this was its beginning). I have not read the Decanter story cited: "There was a good article in Decanter by Jancis Robinson who was telling of a dinner she had with Parker. They opened some dynamite wine...a '66 Mouton or something...and Parker had just finished saying that he believed that a 1 point difference in his ratings really made a difference to his readers. So Robinson asked him what he would rate the wine they were drinking now, and he gave it a 90. She looked up the rating he gave it in his book, and there it was a 95." As for the second point above, another contributor in the same long and interesting 1988 thread -- I happened to know this contributor, married to a wine merchant: "One thing Parker is definitely good for is predicting retail prices. Many retailers and consumers look at Parker's reviews and no further, thus you can count on a Parker-recommended wine being expensive and hard to find. / The best wine values are found those among items which Parker either mistakenly gave a low rating to, or didn't review at all."

With some further meanings entailing berry selection etc. Note that the legal categories go by "must" weight, commonly. Someone ought to post a reference to a general German-wine intro, or to the doubtless past rehashes of this matter even on this forum.

jennahan, I don't know when you visited (and far be it from me to guess anyone's age, least of all online), but by chance was it prepared by Alfredo (of the venerable story with the gold utensils for the dish, said to've been confiscated by the Fascisti)?