MaxH

The list is largely just service-business common sense (maybe we need a new phrase -- it's not quite so common now). My favorite: 8. Do not interrupt a conversation. For any reason. Especially not to recite specials... Enhanced by Holly Moore's corollary: Do not interfere with diners' enjoyment of their meal by interrupting their meal to ask, "How is everything?" Even brief conversations get interrupted by that needless question. Which connects then to: Years ago, checking out fine restaurants in a big new Las Vegas hotel, I saw a stark contrast. Some restaurants (Le Cirque) had high-end European-style service. Employees circulated, actively looking for things needing attention, and unobtrusively providing it -- not waiting for customers to flag them down. Others (Aqua) instead showed high-end "US-style" service. Servers would come to the table, beam at you, and talk about themselves -- and not notice missing silverware, or ask if you wanted coffee at the end. Being chatty wasn't a problem, but a symptom. Good, because as a customer you won't notice if those offenses are deliberately absent either. Everyone is happy. (Just as readers who are less word-conscious don't notice, or mind, when publications routinely edit out "in regards to," or "which" with restrictive relative clauses -- the result looks natural, both to those who don't notice and those who do.) Now what we need (but rarely see) is the sequel: Good practices for customers in fine dining. It seems as if many of them think ethics or decorum are concerns only for the servers or the restaurant. (Otherwise, why would we see things like loud cellphone use, or past threads here by customers who pulled something obnoxious on a restaurant, then actually became indignant when called on it? Or the replies from other restaurant customers, sympathizing with them?!?)

I haven't, but I like the idea. Have used a variant of it, similar but smaller: ravioli roller attachment to the (Marcato) Atlas roller-cutter pasta machines (the Atlas itself is mainly about forming the dough sheets, easily, consistently, and with good texture). Strikes me as an example of (buzzword from a few decades ago) "appropriate technology," simple and elegant rather than complex and flashy. (In "high" technology, incidentally, we value the same virtue. I guess rolling pins and hand-crank kitchen appliances illustrate "low" technology -- "low" in manufacturing complexity, not in utility or elegance.)

Separate points: 1. We've been far down that road, with systems and false starts and surprises, in wine criticism since the 1960s, a history much too complex to summarize here; it didn't work. Mainstream US wine criticism segued from the abortive UC-Davis 20-pt scale related to weinoo's proposal, to a widespread practice similar to "stars," to an (I believe) Australian-born finer scale nominally 100 points (later popularized in the US). Rating taste impressions in a very quantitative-looking way impresses newcomers, but objective basis (even repeatability by the same critic, tested blind) is lacking. US wine consumers today focus on ranges within the top 20 or so of 100 points -- thus effectively using it as a much coarser scale. 2. I believe D. Goldfarb, jsmeeker, Sneakeater et al. are absolutely right that numbers trivialize a rating compared to narrative. But they're the sort of simple guidance US consumers, at least, clamor for, rewarding their use. (One of several competing US wine critics as of 1980 gained greater popularity using a "100-point" scale and decisive, categorical judgments. If you don't think that sells, ask any wine merchant about the relationship of "point scores" to demand, and consequently their effect on prices. Same wine critic even lamented people ignoring his words in favor of his numbers!) 3. Historically, I think the Guide Michelin popularized "stars" many decades ago. Or overpopularized them: Presented as supplemental flags in addition to main ratings of food etc. (1 to 5 "forks"), they came instead to be seen as the main point by casual tourists who again preferred simple guidance, over the Guide's more detailed review ratings and commentaries.

Yes, MacAusland's name will be familiar to many people in the US who've used the classic 1950 Gourmet Cookbook (a million copies in print? including later supplements and sequels), where he appears as "Publisher" and wrote the foreword. I don't know his exact tenure, but MacAusland seems to've been a seminal force in guiding the magazine and establishing its original reputation (and active there for much longer than Reichl, for example). For literally decades, despite other important cookbooks before and after, the "Gourmet" had a unique stature as the mainstream high-end general US cookbook. Several positive eccentricities rewarded the reader: Witty chapter introductions of a kind rare today (musing on the French vs. the English on both sauces and religions, and the close connection therebetween; the poet who composed a salad and ate it; the remarkable Brillat quotation below, whose source I hadn't remembered in an earlier posting). And many gems of amazingly successful recipes that I've used (the kind so good and useful that one or two such can justify buying a book.) When I last checked, it was readily and cheaply available used (like many excellent books of earlier years). If you seek it out, take care to get the original 1950 Cookbook rather than the supplements that served the evident interest it created. Those include the 1963 Gourmet Menu Cookbook and the "Revised" two-volume Gourmet (1965) -- all worthwhile, yet none as unique as the original. (The 1965 two-volume version includes more recipes, but also "revised" away a few memorable bits of the original). MacAusland edited all of them. -- "Adam and Eve sold themselves for an apple. What would they have done for a truffled fowl?" -- J.-A. de Brillat-Savarin

What do you mean you people? / You're right to suggest that there's no point in deconstruction if it's simply a dish pulled apart. Yes, and the word has a special charge, at least in the US. Both because it's a technical, jargon term from literary theory that was very fashionable in the 1990s (frequent references in media like the New York Review of Books), and secondarily because that spurred all kinds of other usages by people who liked to assume they understood it, without taking the trouble do so. Consequently it can be played off of from diverse angles. In the early 1990s, visiting friends at Duke University, I was asked if I wanted to see any particular sights. Yes, I replied: Deconstructionists or the like. So I was obligingly shown Stanley Fish's office (much like any other; Fish himself was absent).

Those of you acquainted with the literary-theoretic sense of "deconstruction" -- which surely popularized the term -- do a real service by succinctly explaining that context here. I'll only add that terms like this, when they become fashionable, invite popular misuse (culinary or otherwise) because they look like something simpler or self-explanatory. Thus D. Goldfarb's reference to "50 popular misuses." Same thing happened 1970s-80s with Lofti Zadeh's mathematics of "fuzzy logic," and more widely in the 1920s with Einstein's "relativity" work in physics. At that time, Bertrand Russell wrote (this is the gist of it if not the exact words -- I'm recalling something read circa 1965, that stuck in my mind) that it had recently become trendy for armchair philosophers who knew nothing of Einstein's work -- "and not just armchair philosophers, but let's be kind and just say armchair philosophers" -- to declare sweepingly "it's very simple, you see: everything is relative!" Those are only a couple of famous examples of the phenomenon. (Another is "world wide web," whose coiners eventually conceded to the misuse when it became near-universal.)

Reviewing this thread with its many thoughtful comments, I'm struck also by something else, often seen in writing that advocates an idea the writers are already "sold" on, so they take its merits as demonstrated, evident to anyone who'll check. The factor I notice is lack of searching examination of why people might not do things in the way we see as enlightened. To judge by some postings, mere narrow publisher profit motives impede this. I'd like to offer further context as grist for thought. Also I emphasize dougal's point: pro-forma weight conversions in cookbooks are worse than none at all -- a risk if publishers treat them as an afterthought (or as placating an eccentric market segment). I glanced just now at some modern European cookbooks, whose conversion notes reveal the density problem underlying all this (volume equivalents corresponding to at least 4:1 weight range, material-dependent). Other countries, incidentally, cite pounds, gallons, etc. as "English" measures (I recall we did so in the US too, until even England metricated). I (working in applied science, and with early interest in it) have used weight measures frequently for 40 years and know their considerations. Even remember Avoirdupois - Apothecaries' - Troy conversion factors from earlier pub'ns, when all three systems were common (a nuisance, and an argument for metrication, and the historical reasons why nails are graded in pennyweight, malt whiskys dispensed in drams, and a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold, yet an ounce of gold is heavier than an ounce of feathers -- they're still measured in different "ounces" and "pounds"). Points to reflect on: 1. Home cookbooks aimed for practicality. Historically, people used simple measuring tools at hand, and it worked. Through the 19th and even into the 20th century, published recipes specified various kinds of glassfulls or even (under metallic currency of steady value!) "five cents' worth" of some ingredients. When seasons dictated your diet, and supplies were bought 50 pounds at a time, you came to know your ingredients. If your flour isn't changing often, a volume measures a consistent weight, and you also get to know its cooking properties. 2. Scale-technology revolution. Before I got a digital scale I used three traditional kitchen scales, decades old (two spring-type and a balance). All ungainly enough to need inconvenient storage in a crowded kitchen. The main spring-type one handles a few pounds and resolves something under an ounce, and is a bulky structure displacing maybe half a gallon (2 liters). In the 1990s, strain-gauge sensors and (especially) cheap ultrahigh-resolution analog-digital converters began enabling quality electronic scales at household prices. Colleagues developing this technology mocked up one in a lab, as a novelty, in the mid-90s that could weigh a stack of books and still accurately weigh additional single paper sheets. The fine resolution in today's $20 electronic kitchen scales -- in flat shapes, much easier to store and use -- is recent, is outside the intuition of many cooks who don't have them. Like early microwave ovens or food processors, only people who have them take their merits for granted -- and become impatient with other cooks unaware of any lack. I believe a successful acceleration of US kitchen culture toward more weight measures for solid ingredients will be one that successfully addresses these factors. Incidentally gill, or quarter pint, 118 ml -- found in [older] US cookbooks too -- actually is a formal standard volume measure, unlike "cup," which evolved in kitchen use and can be ambiguous to newcomers. Like the deciliter that it's close to, a gill happens to be a very convenient size for kitchen work -- in sauces, ladles, plate portions, etc. The larger problem in UK-US "English" measure conversions is the UK Imperial definitions with 20% larger pints and gallons. 1 Imperial gill = 142 ml.

Another variation: Spelt is an ancient wheat variant long cultivated. It's an excellent food grain, even for some people who can't eat bread wheat. It's useful gastronomially too: Part or all spelt flour in egg noodles imparts a subtle heartiness that I find unique -- different from whole wheat, buckwheat, or rye. It goes beautifully with meat dishes. (Hand-rolled spelt noodles were my reintroduction to fresh noodle making.) I used this variation in a comfort-food casserole dish. Egg noodle dough (this time half spelt, half semolina), rolled rather thick (#5 on the Atlas rollers). Large noodles hand-cut from the dough sheets, boiled until barely or not quite cooked; fetched from the water with a handheld strainer. Tossed, in a deep glass baking dish, with light chicken velouté sauce, grated Parmesan, chunks of leftover roast-chicken meat from the day before (the rest of the bird had simmered overnight for the chicken stock that was the base of the sauce), and a little fresh-ground pepper. Into a hot oven until bubbling and brown on top (half an hour). Good hearty food like grandmas of many countries used to make (and cheap, and not too much fat). For an everyday velouté I simmer meat stock and add, rather than cream, canned evaporated milk with some cornstarch worked into it; salt and maybe white pepper to taste. A little simmering cooks the starch (for the dish above, the sauce should not be too thick, about like "whipping" cream.) Use say half as much evap. milk as strong meat stock. The milk behaves like light cream in cooked dishes, gives similar flavor with somewhat less fat, and is very easy to keep on hand. (Not to be confused with "condensed" milk, which in the US denotes added sugar.)

Not that I recall, from years ago, but I think the dough was a little harder to work, and again you can influence that with oil etc. (In case it was unclear, my pph that followed the one you quoted above concerned why I believe egg pasta is so common at home: preference for the richer flavor and more luxurious texture.) FYI lack of a mixing machine is not a great burden. Mixing the dough by hand is a little more work but not much (and a roller machine finishes the job, therefore requires less kneading, for a given result, than if the whole process is manual, in my experience.) Oliver, your "stained glass" suggestion sounds brilliant and versatile. ("Pasta al Oliver?" :-) (N.B., as a student of food history I want to stress that Alfredo and his restaurant -- which, along with more history than most references show, is in the link I included in first post -- didn't invent that preparation at all, it had been in Rome for centuries. He did do it in a stylish way, with good ingredients, and he helped popularize it internationally, particularly in the US, acc. to the sources in the link.) Alfredo de Lellio's own golden utensils were confiscated later by the Fascisti, in their effort against capital flight (which tends to happen in dictatorships) -- acc. to the Romagnolis' US Italian cookbook, IIRC.

Those are profound points (the second supports the first) and should be printed in all dining guides, IMO. If you like a business, show it, by supporting the place and spreading the word. You might think that was obvious or trite. Yet people will give great lip service to what they like, or what we need need more of, without doing the obvious follow-up of actually supporting it. Some folks take for granted the restaurants they like, as if those were part of nature -- then complain indignantly when the restaurants close -- or talk about "petitions" to demand more such businesses. (It's tempting to tell them that's not how it works. You puts your money where your mouth is. Support the businesses someone else took the risk to open, or take the risk yourself. Organize a venture and put your own money on the line. Among other benefits, that'll impart a different perspective, compared to analyses from the armchair, with the greatest of ease ...)

Loop suggestion sounds elegant -- saw it in an earlier thread too. But aiming simply for home pasta, which need not meet DIN or ISO precision standards, I've not been concerned about uneven noodle lengths nor has anyone I know (even a diner who noticed it would forget after the first bite) -- no waste. In fact traditionally in Europe, and today in some US families with roots there, pasta sheets are hand-cut, leaving even the width uneven (and the thickness, if hand-rolled without machine), so there are precedents. I imagine that some presentations, or storage of fresh pasta, might be better with exactly uniform length. In certain student residences I knew, it was usual to press dinner guests into service extending arms forward, forming ample drying racks to drape long (2-foot or longer) noodles straight from the cutter, if the guests were patient enough to hold the position (which, anticipating eating fresh pasta, they always were). Also, hardware stores and lumber yards sell untreated wooden dowels, your choice of diameter and wood, in lengths a few meters long, cheap -- I use them, they can be cut to length for drying rods, braced in some temporary position in the kitchen then stowed away compactly. Long-handled kitchen utensils also serve. Touché !

For wheat noodles, it's the same as egg pasta. You mix water, rather than eggs, with flour to make the dough. Without the fat, albumin, etc. from eggs, the dough texture is different. But then (make sure any purists or dogmatics have left the room first -- ) you can put anything you want into a dough -- it's your own cooking! (That's another thing I like about homemade noodles, forgot to mention it.) You can add oil or anything else, just as with your rice dough above. You can improvise or experiment, or try wild ideas.* I'd guess 99% of commercial European and east-Asian "pasta" (spaghetti, mein, etc.) is made from just flour and water. The option of making noodles that are richer, more flavorful, differently textured when cooked, etc. is no doubt a reason why some people go to the trouble (modest though it be) of making their own. * "Now you are really cooking." -- J. Child in (I think) From Julia Child's Kitchen

Your proposed approach might be problematic for people who want to eat out often, absent a steady stream of new restaurants opening for their personal convenience! Also, echoing misstenacity, hereabouts (industry friends tell me) local journalist critics typically try out new restaurants between four and eight weeks after opening, for the usual reasons cited in this thread. Given that most diners won't be visiting within the first day or week, it makes sense for the journalists deliberately to wait, and report the more typical experience. (When everything's parcooked and "grilled" for the marks.)

Jenni, could you say more about making fresh rice noodles? (I've cooked with commercial dried ones for many years, and keep diverse kinds on hand; they are also common in restaurants in my region with its large international émigré population; fresh thick "fun" noodles for stir-fry arrive daily at the local Chinese grocer; but I never made any rice noodles, or saw them being made.)

Duck-egg pasta! I never heard of it before, sounds fascinating. Details, please! (Why; how compares to chicken eggs pasta; etc. etc. &c.)

Marcella Hazan, whose books taught mainstream America northern Italian cooking, mentioned that her grandmother made fresh egg pasta at home daily, into her 90s. Almost 30 years ago as a university student I was introduced by housemates to the addiction of freshly made pasta. An addiction I managed to "kick" for a while, but it's back. We'd used Atlas six-inch-wide (150mm) hand-crank roller-cutter machines.* Recently I revisited the Atlas after making some pasta by hand, and I'm glad I did. The texture and character of freshly made noodles (I like to include semolina flour) is unique, and with the Atlas it's quick and easy. The machine (which scarcely needs cleaning, just dusting) has high-torque smooth rollers, spacing adjustable by a clutch from #1 (3mm or eighth-inch) to #9 (0.2mm, basically transparent noodles, one egg should make enough to cover a soccer field). By moving the crank to two other insert points, it cuts wide (fettuccine) or narrow (square spaghetti) noodles, or you can cut the pasta by hand. It's one of those tools whose full effect can't be grasped by reading, you must use it or see it to understand. Partly it's the immense torque. After assembling and briefly kneading some dough (with the oft-quoted basic proportion of around three-quarters cup flour to one egg), using enough flour that it's not sticky, you run it a few times thru the rollers wide open (3mm), folding and if necessary dusting w/flour between. Dough's forced gently but decisively through steel rollers. After 5-6 quick passes, folding in thirds before each, you've redistributed the ingredients circa 1000-fold and have a very elastic, supple dough; this takes about a minute. You then run it through at successively smaller spacings which both thins it and builds coherence. By #7, one egg's worth is say 2 sq. feet (0.2 sq.-m) of sheets about the thickness of commercial egg noodles. But much better, surpassing the quality of even any commercial fresh pasta I've bought. It cooks in a minute or two. Lately I hand-cut wide noodles. Used one batch with a Gulasch from Autumn peppers. Other batch tossed in a light Alfredo-oid** sauce assembled in hot platter atop boiling pot: fresh black truffle butter (from local firm, Fabrique Délices), Parmesan, light cream. Exquisite. The noodles themselves have enough character that even simpler treatments come out unusually good. I checked some earlier pasta threads here, and look forward to trying fresh sage with slightly browned butter on fresh noodles! -------- * The milieu included an Internet food-discussion pioneer and fellow Atlas user who in 1982 created net.cooks (renamed rec.food.cooking in 1986), which is still active, the "granddaddy" (Jason Perlow's word) of eG and other current Internet food discussion fora. ** Alfredo de Lellio popularized a version of a very old simple Roman pasta dish with butter and Parmesan cheese. Alfredo didn't use, or need, cream, as writers have long mentioned: a 1990s summary from Italian sources is available on rec.food.cooking.

This thread's subtitle staggered me. I don't think anyone beyond a certain number of years (or cookbooks) cooking experience perceives much competition from online recipe sources, except for very famous dishes or current TV shows. Magazine sites like epicurious have more depth, but the Internet shows only a tiny fraction of what's in the 20th-century cookbook corpus, and even that is sometimes misleading (e.g., garbled, copied from corrupted convenience-food-marketing recipes, etc). I watched the Internet grow as a source of food information and misinformation for the whole 25-plus years now, always comparing it to cookbooks. What you get online (not just with recipes!) is convenience at the cost of completeness and accuracy. It's true I've found new recipe ideas and insights online (in the 1980s, most Internet food-related postings were recipes, and I saved many). But the 'net is utterly blind to anything unposted (which includes most published copyrighted work going back 75 years or so); to grasp how extensive that is, you must go off the net and see what's in print. I've several hundred cookbooks (other people I know have many more) and it's mind-boggling how little of their wisdom is online. A tiny offbeat example: Brillat's punchy quip on Adam, Eve, and truffles was nowhere online when I searched recently, as explained later in that thread. Yet it was from a mainstream mid-century US cookbook found in a million homes at the time, available ever since from used booksellers throughout the US. That this quotation wasn't familiar to current Internet users, or mentioned more often, shows how obscure that particular book is, online, along with the hundred other memorable quips and exceptional recipes I've found in it. The example is unimportant itself, but unfortunately it's the general rule. Regarding cost, I agree with the suggestion of libraries. Also, most of my cookbooks were acquired used and cheap (the count of book titles, on almost any subject, currently available "used" outnumbers the count currently "in print" [new] by something like 100:1).

Nothing to worry about: That situation is routine at restaurants with good wine departments, and if the personnel are good, they will accommodate not only your specified budget, but your tastes too. At a restaurant with first-rate sommeliers, a customer who likes wine but knows little about the different labels (or the labels on that restaurant's list) can describe their tastes and price range, and the somm's will satisfy both. This is precisely what they train for, and it's a point of professional pride to satisfy such requests. FL's wine dept. is known for such service, as mentioned elsewhere including Earlier Here, and I've witnessed it there (disclaimer: I haven't been there in a few years). To complicate your tipping concern, an old and still gracious US custom at restaurants with unusual wine service is to add something extra, maybe a few percent but whatever is comfortable, for the wine dept., and it doesn't hurt to mention this when settling the bill, so the dept. gets the feedback (and the gratuity, though they'll likely get something anyway). Actually, US tipping practice is essentially like European customs except that in Europe, a basic service charge is added to the bill by the restaurant, and the customer may add more at their discretion. In the US it's usually left to you to add all of it. (Though some restaurants now add it automatically, expecially for large parties -- in which case they'll make that clear). Keep in mind that this is the main source of pay for the servers. Classic basic US tipping addition is 15% added to the bill, more or less according to your satisfaction level. In very fine restaurants it's informally customary to leave a bit more such as 18-20, or even more, if the experience was excellent. (Then again, in Some Big Cities everyone expects to be showered with money, and some servers may sneer at even 20%. I remember nearly 30 years ago on business in midtown Manhattan at a big hotel, if someone ordered a hamburger for room delivery, it started out expensive, say $10 -- thirty years ago! -- then a couple of those numerous NYC hotel taxes were added, and a "delivery charge" -- which, you were carefully informed, did not include a tip for the delivery person; thus occurred the $25 hamburger. But Yountville (nor most of California) is nothing like that. Nor (in case anyone hasn't mentioned this) is it pronounced "YOWNT-vill" -- it's "YONT-vill," after the founding Yount family, who are still around (I know one of them); though there's a school of thought that this should remain unemphasized, to facilitate spotting out-of-towners. As in Oregon when visitors pronounce it like Polygon, or NYC when they say "Avenue of the Americas" because it's on the street signs -- etc.

Thanks for an appetizing account, Nakji! Tabasco will certainly serve, even though de-fanged some years ago (I guess to widen the market) -- in the 1960s, a spoonful could put you in the hospital, and almost did me, not to dwell on the point. But any hot sauce that tastes good to you will work, just as you don't need a particular recipe for M&C. The tart (vinegared) red-pepper flavor of Tabasco fits cheese (and egg) dishes well. It's also good as a table garnish for M&C, whether or not you include the gentle under-the-radar hint of it within the M&C itself, which brightens up the cheese flavors. I keep about a dozen widely different hot sauces on hand, refrigerated (easy, because compact and durable), and have tasted through many more.* In particular for cheese dishes, a neighbor kindly introduced Coyote Cucina brand, during experiments with seasonings for Welsh Rabbit/Rarebit. CC is based on Scotch Bonnets and again vinegar, not quite as hot as some of the Bonnet / Habanero sauces, and for some reason it goes exceptionally with cheese dishes. (For anyone who doesn't know about it, Welsh Rabbit or Rarebit -- both nicknames go back several hundred years -- is a spiced melted cheese dish that can be outSTANDing on toasted freshly baked high-gluten bread -- PRIME comfort food.) * There used to be a specialty pepper-sauce shop near me, like the Mo Hotta Mo Betta that sells by mail in the US. It was amazing, you could walk in, explain the variety of pepper you wanted and the rough Scoville strength, and they'd prescribe like a classic apothecary. Scores of bottles were open for tasting, with tiny plastic spoons just like those for sampling ice cream; unlike ice cream, hot sauces didn't exactly refresh the palate and after several tastes you found yourself wishing desperately for a cold light beer, even inveighing the owner to get licensed for that vital but missing adjunct!

Unfortunately (and ironically) Pam, precisely the opposite was the history with US pub'ns, when that was tried with the related topic of wine. Among US wine publications for consumers (a genre that grew rapidly in the 1970s) one of the largest was a general magazine with feature articles and extensive tasting notes from respected wine writers tasting blind in panels. It pointedly carried no advertising and survived on subscription sales, claiming that advertising threatened the objectivity of its criticism. It was widely read among wine enthusiasts. It failed in the 1980s. A later publication, carrying some of the same wine writers but strongly focused on advertising, prospered: the Wine Spectator.. Some of its practices have even raised eyebrows, as in a 2008 LA times artice that includes: "Milan’s Osteria L’Intrepido restaurant won Wine Spectator magazine’s award of excellence this year despite a wine list that features a 1993 Amarone Classico Gioe S. Sofia, which the magazine once likened to 'paint thinner and nail varnish.' Even worse: Osteria L’Intrepido doesn’t exist. To the magazine’s chagrin, the restaurant is a Web-based fiction devised by wine critic and author Robin Goldstein, who said he wanted to expose the lack of any foundation for many food and wine awards. ... This year, nearly 4,500 restaurants spent $250 each to apply or reapply for the Wine Spectator award, and all but 319 won the award of excellence or some greater kudos ... That translates to more than $1 million in revenue." Goldstein's online material about the case has more details: "one of [WS's] main claims (aside from calling me names) was that its staff had 'called the restaurant multiple times.' However, the only message that was ever left on the restaurant’s voice mailbox (before this story broke) was on May 22, 2008, after Osteria L’Intrepido had already won the Award of Excellence. The message was from the magazine’s ad sales department, asking me if I’d like to buy an advertisement for Osteria L’Intrepido to appear in the August issue along with my listing. You can listen to the voicemail here..." There's more, but the point is, practical experience hasn't favored the noble but unprofitable concept of advertising-free enthusiast media.

And irony, if they've been around a while! By the middle or late 1970s, with the US food-magazine population in a growth spurt, everyone I knew who actually cooked preferred Bon Appetit. In a word, it was hipper. In tune with cooking amid busy working schedules ("T minus four weeks: Order the lamb ...") and food trends. Gourmet was dignified but staid, albeit always with the best photography. (I never took Gourmet, but bought random issues as much for the photos as anything else.) I don't know if BA and G had the same ownership then. My experience was mostly with pre-Reichl Gourmet. I don't recall that she particularly started the trend -- already underway -- to advertising all those "professional" looking (yet UL, not NSF, certified) brushed-stainless yuppie show-kitchen appliances that Marcella Hazan, who knew something about cooking, already deplored in the 1970s.* I know little of Reichl's work (except one of her earlier food books), but not everyone applauded her move to Gourmet. From the 1999 introduction to the reissue of the Hesses' famous critique The Taste of America (a must-read for its other content, uniquely strong on food history): Ruch Reichl [was] recently lured by Gourmet from the New York Times by a reported bonus of a million dollars ... Our final "De Gustibus" column in the Times concluded, "As long as fashion editors tell us what to eat, we shall eat badly." The line disappeared on the copy desk. Thereafter, fashion triumphed, totally ... In a Reichl review, the first question posed is what sort of people dine there. At one place, Ruth ... swooned upon spying the Queen of Mean, the ex-convict Leona Helmsley, in romantic congress with an attractive younger male; unfortunately, they were out of earshot. We're talking glamor. -------- * Marcela Hazan: "I am very skeptical of the dream kitchen -- not necessarily because of its elaborate equipment, but because of the spirit in which it has been assembled. It sometimes seems to reflect more of an interest in theater than in the taste of cooking ... Some of the best food I have ever had has come from kitchens so bare that to use the word 'equipment' to describe their facilities would be an overstatement." -- More Classic Italian Cooking," 1978. Knopf, ISBN 0394498550.

Maybe it needs a separate thread, but this is a radical development, in view of gross cases I've witnessed online, or read about. If it has effect, I expect fewer one-post participants who post (or register) on food discussion sites to comment on just one product or firm. It might even drive Yelp out of business, if we can judge from the persistent ethics publicity, including in WSJ in 2007 and Los Angeles Times, 2009. Yesterday's AP article in the link says "the FTC's proposal made many bloggers anxious." Yet little anxiety was evident in the WSJ story, among bloggers who recommended businesses that gave them freebies (and who didn't even acknowledge this when writing). Yelp's CEO even defended a restaurant-sponsored Yelp party, claiming such events "don't guarantee positive reviews" (though the one in question produced "a torrent" of them).

Side note for those outside North America: Just as her Book of Household Management usually is called "Mrs Beeton," the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book was long better known as "the Fannie Farmer" in the US; after several editions the publisher changed the title accordingly.* Blether, you've hit the nail exactly. Even understated the situation, maybe. I too have found great convenience and value from Amazon, and posted Recommendations (mostly food and wine) since 1990s. Yet sometimes even vital publication details are missing. When I was reading through Patrick O'Brian's 20 nautical novels, which form a sequence, there was no hint of any kind on Amazon about the order of the novels -- just irrelevant pub. dates of the particular paperback reprints. And when academic friends revised a venerable textbook widely known under its original authors' names, Amazon offered no sort of link between familiar older editions and the new one under different authorship. The kinds of vital guidance you'd take as normal at an in-person independent bookshop. * The "Fannie Farmer" is the longest-established mainstream US cookbook of the 20th century. After 40 years it got competition from what became the "other" most-popular 20th-c. US cookbook, the Joy of Cooking. They're different both in organization and genesis. The FF was more systematic, with many explicit tutorial sections for beginning cooks. Also, the FF evolved incrementally; early and late 20th-c. editions are clearly versions of the same book. The JOC was less a well-defined work than a "brand" for a series of almost independent texts. Originally family recipes from canned foods, printed for a local fund-raiser, a few years later it was unrecognizable, and a popular early-1940s edition is again very different from the 1960s, though by that time popular recipes were carried over in the revisions. The later editions also showed more life and wit than the contemporaneous FF.

I was a little surprised to read this thread and not spot Mrs Beeton, very possibly the best-known cookbook ever published in English, though less so within the US. Notable for its eccentricities as well as useful content. Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, but everyone in the UK calls it "Mrs Beeton." Sometimes with a roll of the eyes, for, among the numbered recipes, Beeton's auntly quips on practical modern [1800s] living despite her rather short life (subject even of a British TV biodrama series). Continuously in print since 1861. Beeton by the way is a de-facto "national" cookbook, representative of its place of origin (examples from other countries are Escoffier's, Boni's, Molokhovets's, Duch's, and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce Foods and Drinks Management Department's multivolume Famous Dishes of China.). The US (a younger culture by several thousand years) has had popular cookbooks, but nothing with the special iconic status of those I mentioned. The nearest, I believe, was Eliza Leslie's, which completely dominated the 19th century in ways no US cookbook since has done. It might have become a permanent fixture like Beeton, except for being displaced starting 1890s by the "scientific" Boston Cooking School Cookbook of Fannie Farmer, a book with much more system and science, though much less soul.

That's Saint-Ange's famous 1927 Livre de Cuisine, doing for home cooks roughly what Escoffier's Guide Culinaire did for professionals. I've gotten valuable info on practical French cooking from it. Could make a fine introduction, and none is more authentic. Originally published by the encyclopedia specialists Librarie Larousse, who also did a general French food reference (an encyclopedia rather than a cookbook), the Larousse Gastronomique. The Saint-Ange cookbook experienced a renaissance of popularity in France in (IIRC) the 1950s, re-released under the new Bonne Cuisine title, and was translated into English under that title. It's also among the small group of standard reference works on French cooking. They surface in various eG threads, such as This one recently, explicitly about them, and an earlier thread on iconic Women writers on food.