phaelon56

Yes. That's correct. And, so I'm told, in Italy the government regulates the price of espresso if it is served at a standup bar - just as the price of baguettes is regulated in France. But just as in France - the price is noticeably higher if seated at a table. I'd still love to know where to get a really good cup of drip or press pot coffee in Paris. The coffee I found was not true espresso nor was it drip and it wasn't as good as either. But it was more expensive than I'm accustomed to paying for both.

Cafe filtre would be some form of drip coffee. The two cafe au lait's I tried were made with the same ubiquitous "cafe" that seemed to predominate. It's not as concentrated as espresso but is made in an espresso machine. The only place I came across in my week there that had drip coffee or press pot coffee was Starbucks. I did find a lunch cafe near the Louvre that was willing to make me a cappuccino with a couple extra shots and their "cafe" was a bit more concentrated than the others but still timid.

I agree that this is at present an "industry standard". There is one legitimate exception but you'll find it in precious few restaurant venues (although this will change with time). Here and there a few forward thinking restaurateurs have developed relationships with some of the more progressive independent roaster and begun offering a "coffee menu". This will typically include some of this season or last season's best estate varietals - in some cases "CoE" Cup of Excellence winners. In most cases the brewing method offered will be individual press pots and the price per serving does not include "refills". Restaurant Eve in Alexandria VA and Carriage House Cafe in Ithaca NY are among a handful of dining establishments offering such an option. At the $2.50 to $4.00 price point that most fine dining establishments charge for coffee it's a reasonable expectation that there's no charge for refills. If they are paying $8.00 to $10.00 per pound for a high quality coffee at wholesale prices (not award winning - just high quality) the cost of goods is 12 to 15 cents for each 5 to 6 ounce cup. Add in the capital expense and depreciation of a brewer, electricity, water etc. .... and there is still an extremely healthy markup - even if you provide multiple refills. But the sad reality is that many "fine dining" restaurants aren't seeking out what many of us in the trade regards as exceptional coffee. I'll hazard a guess that they are also not paying attention to process control, freshness and stock rotation, brew temperatures etc. I may be preaching to the choir here (in some cases) but some very good highly regarded restaurants still serve some very mediocre coffee. I find it truly bizarre that establishments sourcing the finest quality ingredients and ensuring that those food products stand out and display the best aspects of their inherent nature.... pay so little attention to a product that is often the final note of a diner's evening. That's a shame.

Pangea, Za Za's and Willow are all in that general end of town - are those the places you refer to? I don't think the better dining destinations in Ithaca depend on tourists or students for the bulk of their income. When I lived there the "finer dining" scene was just coming into its own but times have changed in the past 10 to 15 years. Parking is certainly convenient on Third Street. Also - I doubt that the arrival of Dijon will really cut into the existing revenue levels of other finer dining places in town. If only Syracuse has so many goood options.....

I just received an email from Gregory at Lokelani's advising that their Winter Menu begins this week. They do not appear to have a web site - I requested that he send me a jpeg of the new menu and I'll post in here. Other Ithaca news: Mark and Courtnay Papera, formerly owners of the highly rgearded Epernay in Montclair NJ have relocated to Ithaca (I think one of them may have attended university there?). They are opening Dijon Bistro on or close to this November 1st. Looks very promising - a bit of an odd location on Third Street next to the DMV but parking is a cinch as it's a retail plaza with little else open there in the evening. If the food's good (which I suspect it will be) they should have no problem drawing customers. I lived in Rutherford - not far from Montclair - from 1999 to 2003. I used to scan the eGullet NJ Forum regularly and the Epernay Discussion Thread was quite active. I'll definitely be returning to Ithaca to try Lokelani's Winter Menu and also to check out Dijon as soon as they're open. It's nice to have new options close enough to drive to for a weekend night dinner.

Do you suspect a connection between the opening of the Union Square TJ's (which happened roughly seven months ago) and the apparent reduced traffic levels at Whole Foods? Just curious....

This raises the inevitable question - where does one go to find "cafe filtre" in Paris?

Apart from the heavy seasoning and stewing this calls to mind the only okra preaprtio I've ever enjoyed. My former girfriend's stepfatehr would chop fresh tomatoes from his garden, shuck some corn right off the cob and then saute that in a sizzling hot cast iron skillet along with a bit of diced green pepper and fresh picked fresh sliced okra. It's the one and only time I have ever truly enjoyed okra - interesting taste and none of the sliminess most of us associate with that vegetable. It was his contention that freshness and extremely limited handling of the vegetable is key. He also advised fressing it immediately after picking if it was to be used in any stewed prepartion and hanbdling the frozen okra as little as possible before cooking. Again - all in the pursuit of reduced sliminess - always a worthwhile goal to my way of thinking. And I don't care how good fried chicken is when it's fresh - even the best preparations suffer when sitting on a steam table or under a heat lamp for more than a few minutes.

Long before bagged greens and pre-cut vegetables were available in supermarkets I spent a summer as a farm laborer on a tomato ranch in California's Central Valley. It may be different today with various types of FDA or other federal oversight (although I doubt it) but back then, out in the fields, there were no Port-A-Sans, no running water and Purel hand sanitizer had not yet been invented. The tomato fields were 1/2 mile wide and 1 mile long. Where do you think people went for their potty breaks? (hint - no one walked very far) . Granted, we were growing tomatoes that went straight to a cannery after being harvested, but I think the fundamental problems intoroduced by the scale of such operations have grown more profound with time.

Great report indeed. I'll put Dano's Heuriger on my list of "must visit" places for weekend roadtrips come spring. I agree that Carriage House Cafe is a great bargain for the food quality. My service quality there has ranged from pleasant but perfunctory to very good but it does tend to be a bit slow. As for espresso and coffee quality IMHO they do as good a job as Gimme on their process control and milk texturing for espresso drinks. But they have recently moved away from using Gimme's beans and started featuring some other roaster's products including Cafe Kubal. And there's a very good new restaurant in Ithaca - just off the Commons at 113 South Cayuga in Dano's old space. It's called Lokelani's and features a French oriented menu with Tahitian/Polynesian influences. It's my understanding that the French owners Gregory Corsyn and his wife Gina lived and worked in Tahiti for some period of time prior to moving to Ithaca. They call the menu "Euro-Pacific" and I was delighted with my recent meal there. We both had a fish based "Moorea" soup. It is, in essence, a variation on bouillabaise and includes homemade croutons and a dollop of rouille. Very generous portion, good fish and excellent broth. I opted for breast of duck as my entree - nicely cooked to medium as requested. My date had black sesame encrusted ahi tuna and was also pleased. The included vegetables were perfectly cooked. Best of all.... and I'm dead serious about this.... the creme brulee was spectacular! Unquestionably the best I've ever had anywhere. I absolutely love creme brulee if it's properly made and prior to dining here the only place I've eaten where it's close to being as good and also very consistent is L'Ecole in lower Manhattan (a restaurant operated by the French Culinary Institute). Decor at Lokelani's is fairly simple and service was from a very young waiter - enthusiastic and energetic - perhaps needs a bit more seasoning to be polished but he was efficient and pleasant. I will return.

Those temps sound about right for seving temperature. But if you get a freshly brewed cup of coffee in a good cafe - perhaps one brewed directly into an airport or better yet - brewed on a machine like the Clover you should expect that the coffee was brewed in the optimal brewing range of about 200 to 205 degrees F. How much and how quickly the temp drops after that is function of what type of drinking vessel one uses, whether it is preheated or not and how quickly the brew is consumed. I taste coffee at all sorts of temps and find the best coffees to taste great even when the temp drops below 150 F but I think that 150 - 160 F range is a sweet spot for drinking. That's why my home brewing is done directly into a preheated thermal carafe and I serve in relatively small (6 oz to 8 oz) servings.

I agree with you Chef Carey - on the value of a good burr grinder, fresh Arabica beans and use of a press pot (or a manual drip filter for some of us. My reason for suggesting a *can* of coffee is that everywhere I went in Paris, at least outside of the Latin Quarter (which my brief time there did not allow me to explore), Illy was the predominant brand and it's readily available in whole bean or pre-ground form here in the US in nitrogen flushed vacuum packed canisters. Illy has what I'd describe as a very balanced flavor profile in the sense that it is not especially robust nor is it bitter (if properly made). I don't personally happen to be a fan of that brand. As a coffee roaster I'm loathe to recommend that people consider canned coffee of any type but the coffee I had in Paris could most easily be replicated by Illy. I'm sure that good press pot coffee and good espresso is typical in people's homes but I wasn't fortunate enough to visit any private homes nor did I find good coffee or espresso in cafes or restaurants. That's not to say that it wasn't there but I just didn't run across it. And in defense of Paris I'll add that there's nearly as much if not more bad coffee and espresso in NYC but in NYC (for me) it's easier to find the good stuff.

I finally tried Dante in Armory Square - found it to be underwhelming and others have reported similar experiences. L'Adour is said by some discerning friends to be a bit spotty these days - not as consistent in food in service and seems to fluctuate in consistency greatly depending on who is in the kitchen (this is all second hand info). "bc" in Armory Square continues to yield consistently excellent feedback from a variety fo my friends as does la cena. Kettle Lakes has closed but KL owner/chef Brian Shore has returned to the Arad Evans Inn in Fayetteville to head up their food operation and feedback is very good. The dining room at the Genesee Grande Hotel and also "Redfield's at the Marx" (in the Marx hotel - both places are on East Genesee Street not far from downtown) seem to get favorable feeedback but I've only been to breakfast at Redfield's - haven't had dinner at either place. A very small Thai/Laotian/Cambodian place opened downtown near Clinton Square this year. It targets the lunch crowd but does stya open until 8 PM or so for dinner. Not much for atmosphere or ambiance. I should have tried a Cambodian dish - I ordered a Thai entree and found it underwhelming. I wish there was more to report but this is an area still in the midst of population decline, stagnant or negative economic growth and rising cost of living. An aging population with increasingly less discretionary income spells major growth opportunities for chain restaurants in the suburbs. Moe's, Bonefish Grill, Smokey Bones... places like this are popping up in the eastern and Northern suburbs but not worth discussing. And we still lack a good "authentic" Mexican restaurant. Alto Cinco, which I highly recommend and enjoy, is more of a Mexican influenced contemporary bistro and less a Mexcian restaurant in the genre some might be searching for. El Rincon, a small but highly regarded palce in Sodus NY, has opened a larger outpost in downtown Canandaigua. All we got in Syracuse this year is El Canelo, a mediocre western NY state chain and also a new/larger location for Jalapeno's - an existing Mexican place that I find to be far from satisfactory. On the beverage front I'm happy to report that Syracuse will finally get a cafe offering cutting edge espresso drinks (no - not the folks I work for at present!). Cafe Kubal is slated to open on outer James STreet near Thompson Road sometime around Thanksgivng.

If you're new to smoking and happen to choose hickory as one of your wood chip types - use it with discretion. I've used mesquite and alder with very pleasing results but found hickory to yield and overpowering smokiness unless I backed it off to about half the amount of chips I used with other types of wood.

John's Pizza on W. 44th is a good bet. It's nearly as good as the original John's on Bleecker but unlike that one it has room for groups. It's in an old converted church and is an unusual space aesthetically speaking. You can find better pizza in Manhattan but John's is still among the top ten by most estimations and its far better than any pizza you'll find in OKC (or most other places). Chinatown for dim sum yes - but also just to walk around. Chinatown Ice Cream factory is a great place for kids of all ages - they have some cool flavors (green tea, lychee flavored etc.). And there's a little bulk candy place next door that has unique novelty candy (my daughter and her high school friends loved Chinatown when they went to NYC and always visited those two places). The size of your group might make some of the great ethnic options over on 9th Ave in the 40's and 50's a challenge as many of those restaurants can't seat a group that large. But if you have enough chaperones and enough kids with moderately adventurous tastes it's worth a try. Take some to the Kebab House... a few others to the Vietnamese place on the corner of 49th (can't recall the name)... and so on. Also consider Carmine's in the Theater District. Loud, fun red sauce Italian joint. It's not reputed to have stellar food but by most counts serves decent Italian-American fare and is oriented towards groups.

I had only one cafe au lait during my time there and tried two or three cappuccino's. ust have been bad luck on my part as they all tasted kind of weak and the milk testuring was not silky and velvety like I get it at the best cafe's in the US. BUt I didn't have what could be considered as a reasonable sample size. I did have one better than average espresso at Cafe Vespa in the Marais.

I loved the food when I visited Paris but found the coffee to vary from atrocious to barely acceptable. If you've never had really good espresso you might find "un cafe" to be strong but smooth. I'd describe it as flat espresso that tasted a bit watered down. It was typically made with Italian brands such as Illy that are smooth and inoffensive but lack a distinct and memorable flavor profile. More significant is that little to no attention is paid to issues such as consistency of tamping, milk texturing, temperature control (of the shot pulling process) and worst of all - it was usually stale. I saw grinder doser after grinder doser that were full to the brim early in the day and the ground coffee sat there getting more stale by the minute all day long. Initially I was baffled by the disconnect between my dissatisfaction, as described above, and the glowing reports I've read and heard here and elsewhere about "French coffee". Since then I've discovered that friends with extensive travel experience in Italy, almost to a person, share my perspective on the coffee scene in France. Perhaps even more telling are the recent email discussions I've had with some French espresso enthusiasts. When asked where to get good espresso in Paris the standard answer was: "in our homes". Ouch. I know this sounds really negative and that's not my nature (as those of you who've read many of my posts will likely agree). Now that I'm done ranting... If you really wanted to try reproducing French coffee at home I suggest buying a can of Illy and using a stovetop espresso machine (aka a "moka pot"). Use a trifle less coffee per ounce of water than the dirtections recommend and you're likely to get a brew that's very similar to what you enjoyed in France but quite possibly better.

My cut-off time is anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after the committed delivery time. Not sure how the better independent shops hand deliveries in other towns but the place I order from always commits to a delivery time estimate when I order. They knwo the delivery area well enough, the estimated travel time and current delivery load of the driver and also know how many pies are in house waiting to be delivered. Also - they're smart enough to wait until about ten minutes before the driver will be ready for the next run before they put pies in the ovens. That said - I'd much rather have a pie that sat on a counter at room temperature in the box or in the driver's car for awhile than to get one that sat in the box on top of the oven. It's hot enough up there that the pie keeps cooking to some extent and can be a bit leathery after 20 minutes or so. Much better to reheat it in the oven at home.

Ouch. Talk about world domination. The 'bucks is currently expecting to have 14,000 stores worldwide by the end of 2006 and has now upped their estimate for long range plans to a level 10,000 stores more than they had previously projected. Starbucks Expansion Plans The bizarre aspect of this - to my thinking - is that half of the new stores will be in the US. That makes for 18,000 additional Starbucks in the US. I guess the old standup comic's joke (was it Carlin who said it?) about opening a Starbucks inside a Starbucks was not too far off. It's both bad news and good news for independents. Bad news because Starbucks will cut buying contracts for more beans than ever - thereby reducing the supply of some of the better-than-commodity level beans currently used by most independents (and driving up prices in the process although if the coffee farmers and their families see the bulk of the extra money it then becomes a good thing). But the good news is that they can't possibly improve quality and it may decline even more than it has in recent years - when you operate on that massive a scale it's inevitable that quality has to suffer a bit. That opens even more doors for quality driven independent operators to distinguish themselves and gain more customers and more loyalty. And here's the cartoon that makes more sense than ever after this news update. Starbucks Relativity

Along that same line of thought... a moka pot for making "stovetop espresso" is also a great way to get inexpensive but good drinks. And I've been meaning to get an Aeropress and play around with it - thanks for reminding me!

I never mentioned them in past threads (or this one) because they had no retail operation that I was aware of and weren't selling beans by the pound on their web site. But I just checked it now and sure enough - they have an on-line store and a good selection of quality coffees. And I agree that they're up there in the top tier with the other usual suspects.

I think the distinction is a bit different in markets such as NYC than it is in smaller cities and small metro areas. In a smaller market such as mine - with 150,000 in the city and another 200,000 or so in the suburbs- we typically have three categories: * "Neighborhood" restaurants that draw their clientele mostly from a geographic area within a few miles of their location. Prices are usually modest, menus not terribly inventive or ambitious, and atmosphere is relaxed. * "Destination" restaurants - typically a bit pricier, often with more inventive or more trendy menus and drawing clientel from throughout our small metro area. But these are places that many people may visit as often as once a month or more. * "Special Occasion" restaurants - some very traditional and some more creative but the common thread is that people (in areas such as mine) rarely visit such a place more than once a year. These are at the high end of the price range, usually have only one or two turns on any given table in an evening and dinner is a lengthy affair - often reserved for occasison such as engagements, anniversaries and birthdays. But in a densely populated urban area with higher levels of discretionary income, more single or childless professionals, good public transportation, moderate to high levels of business and tourism visitors... the equation changes radically and most of the above descriptors are either meaningless or have much different meanings.

Five packets of Sweet 'n Lo to add to the single flute of champagne I had just served. She said "I like it kinda sweet.". Uhhhh... yeah.... I guess so.

Rent a really swank limo, stock it with some good wines and take a 90 minute ride to Mirbeau Inn and Spa in Skaneatles. It's as close as you'll get to big city market dining anywhere much closer than Toronto or NYC - both in price and quality. I ate there about a year or two ago and apart from the sashimi course the five course tasting menu was exceptionally good (and priced acccordingly).

Work obligations prompted me to move away from Rutherford back to my NY state hometown two years ago but I always follow these threads with interest. Corrado's always got good reviews... Mignon was relatively new when I was there but I heard good feedback about them. I had serviceable Italian food with nice atmosphere and good service on several occasions at Paisano's. Technically speaking Park & Orchard is in East Rutherford but it's directly across the street from the edge of Rutherford proper and is much closer to downtown Rutherford than it is to downtown East Rutherford. I tried Village Gourmet on three separate occasions and found it consistently disappointing. I went to Eros many, many times for coffee and dessert - okay desserts, acceptabel coffee and medicore espresso drinks but nice atmopshere. We did eat downstairs at Eros in the restaurant section once. Stick to the Greek items and avoid everything else. And New York Pizza still makes about as good a pie as you can get anywhere (they bring their dough in from their original Brooklyn location - which overcomes the issue crappy water quality that impacts other NJ pizzerias).