foodie52

I ate there January 6. If the salad of pork cheeks and dandelion is still on the menu, try it. Everything is good ( altho the prime rib wasn't nearly as good as the cut we get here in Texas....) Devilled kidneys were a treat, as well. And the desserts are fantastic!

Robb: I've been in Austin since 1974. At some point in time I remember enjoying reading your work in the Chronicle. My question is, do you think that local rags like the Chronicle have power in influencing peoples' dining choices? How much respect did you garner while working for the Chronicle, and did it help advance your career? Thanks.

Virginia Woods of the Austin Chronicle gives Central Texas a "heads up": this time, we're on the Travel Channel. We're On TV It's not too early to think about attending the Saveur Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. Hill Country Food and Wine Festival

I'm using the Umbrian. And I am assuming it's the 2002 harvest. I like the Umbrian because it uses just one type of olive and has the best flavor, in terms of fruitiness and length of finish. It's a great oil. Having said that, I don't know if the oil that they are selling at igourmet is the 2002, or if it's a later harvest. If it's 2003, I'd love to know what it tastes like.

Unfortunately. olive oils that are not extra virgin are also not cold pressed and therefore have been exposed to either heat or chemicals or both. I'd rather not eat those, so I use EV all the time. If I don't want the olive flavor, I go with something else. I'd love to see a cold pressed grapeseed oil but haven't come across one so far. Color isn't an indication of an oil's quality. The bottlers can mess with the color easily. If they want the oil greener, they can press it with the leaves.

Aren't there any youth hostels in those areas?

Pietro Coricelli Umbrian is my favorite this year. I also love to use the Greek Morea for finishing. Nunez de Prado Flower of the Oil is wonderful, but out of my price range . I cook with any cold pressed EV that's on sale. Olive oil prices are high right now.

So, by definition, haute cuisine can only be French.

Has haute cuisine been defined? You can have two restaurants using the same ingredients and coming out with different dishes. We've got a wonderful restaurant here called Fonda San Miguel. The chef creates amazing Interior Mexican dishes, some of them quite spicy, using anchos, guajillos, chipotles...you name it. I consider his food "haute" cuisine because his flavors are so finely balanced that the spices never interfere with his featured ingredient. And he only uses the best. Presentation is also a key factor. Meanwhile, down the road, a TexMex place is using the same ingredients...pork, chipotles, cheese...but coming up with a totally different cuisine. And it ain't haute!

1.My son works in the Bakehouse at Whole Foods. He wanted a pastry position, but WF does very few pastries: they farm out all the complicated stuff. So he's mixing...breads, muffins, etc. He's not real happy. 2.Four Seasons isn't hiring pastry chefs. I know that because ( see #1). Son talked to Elmar Prambs about a position. They only have 6 pastry chefs, and there's no turnover at the moment. 3. Central Market is a good place to apply to. North Lamar or South Lamar store: either one. But there's not much room for creativity. There is, however, quite a lot of turnover.

I've made passable ranch dressings using low fat tofu....just stick in the blender with some rice vinegar and dijon, a pinch of salt. It turns out pretty good. For more ideas, check out Dana Jacobi's book: Soy! It has lots of great ideas for tofu: you don't even know that it's in the dishes.

I have an 85 year old friend whose family meets somewhere in Oklahoma every year to hunt morels. She comes home with bags full for her freezer...

I'm sorry, but I don't understand how someone with food prejudices can have the job of food critic. Shouldn't that priviledge be given to someone who embraces all foods? It's like someone who has the job of sports writing, but hates baseball and refuses to go to games, or goes and just says that it was totally boring and incomprehensible. Oh...and someone scored a run. By the way, I ate at St. John's a few weeks ago. I had pork cheeks. Devilled kidneys. Lots of offal. It was all delicious and beautifully presented. It's not like a bunch of intestines were dumped , steaming, on a plate in front of me. It was all exquisite.

So..... What kind of prize would YOU like to find in your Happy Meal?? Do tell!

Yeah...I'm thinking that this may become my bedtime beverage , with a shot of Bailey's or Kahlua. I'll get back to y'all in a few months when I am 10 pounds heavier!

Soy cheese Cheap tequila Margarine Carob masquerading as chocolate ( WHO are you trying to fool???)

Do you want to eat at home? Central Market has already-seasoned fajita meat, ready to go on the grill. Just ask the Meat Market guys. They'll show you where it is. And it's good.

I hate unisex bathrooms. The toilet seats are always up.

fish and chips. the chips had to be really , really limp and greasy and covered in salt and malt vinegar.

I don't know why she didn't simply regard herself as the lowest in the pecking order. She was the newest on the line, obviously not planning on staying, and there only to gather grist for her food mill! And after reading her article, I don't blame the staff for keeping their mouths shut. Sounded to me as if this woman has self-esteem issues that unfortunately surfaced in her less-than-professional article.

My garden: Rosemary Sage Flat-leaf chives Basil Dill ( for the butterfly pupae) Butterfly weed Gregg's Blue Mist ( for the butterflies) Bluebonnets...hopefully...I planted a pound of seeds in November. No fruits . No veggies. I've given up on watering. I'm into fauna as opposed to flora now.

I've addressed slotting on aonther board... Meat and seafood departments sample products that are new ( a new flavor of sausage for example,) or , say, seabass if a large shipment has come in and they need to move it fairly quickly. The point is for customers to taste the product. Lots of people are afraid to cook fish. A seafood employee will usually be pan-searing the fish, after a brief time in one of our marinades. Bakery has samples of almost all of their breads available all the time. Again, it educates our customers as to what is available. Specialty Foods is a whole 'nother ballgame. That's where I work. Sampling can be because of a number of reasons, but it's usually because we have a lot of a particular product and it needs to get moving. We may have bought two pallets of Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki marinade. One pallet is stacked along the wall in the Meat Market.That space is precious and needs to pay for itself. Hence the demo. The point is to move product! You have no idea how many products sit on the shelf, collecting dust because people don't know how it tastes. Again, I addressed this on the slotting thread. We've had a number of vendors who had a good idea for a product, say, a bbq sauce. They'll spend thousands developing a recipe, producing the product, getting it into the store and then drop the ball. I can't sell something unless I've tasted it. Either THEY come and do a few demos or their product dies. I do know that the place I work is unique in that we are all about customer education. Our customers are hungry for new products and get excited about them. But you're not gonna pay 6.99 for a grilling sauce unless you've tasted it, OR have been convinced by someone who HAS tasted it ( ie: me ). Manufacturers have the option to pay an independent demo company to demo their products. We get them in the store, but they are not as effective as the maker of the product. If you are selling your product through a broker/vendor, then you have to make arrangements for your product to be demo'd. Our best-selling items are the ones that are demo'd by the manufacturer. A salsa producer from Austin can come into the store at 10 am on a Saturday, demo all day and sell through about 7-8 cases of product. We all benefit from this.

I work at Central Market in Austin, Texas. It is probably the best grocery store in the USA, in terms of fresh product and choice ( check out the website, centralmarket.com). I work in the Specialty Foods department. Our 7 aisles of specialty foods has about 150,000 products, including 125 olive oils.I am the product and customer service expert. We carry lots of local lines of product: Hudson's on the Bend, One World, Austin Slow Burn, Texas Texas, Stubbs, Hell of a Relish, Alberto's, New Caanan Farms, Fischer and Wieser, Bee Cave Honeys..... We carry lots of American products and lots of European: our out-of-state products mostly come in through brokers. The brokers ( Tree of Life, Gourmet Awards, European Imports, to name the largests) present new product to our procurement team on a monthly basis. Once the product is tasted and compared, and once it is determined that it will contribute to our mix, it is ordered. When the product arrives, we get the opportunity to place it on the shelf. It will usually get one skew per flavor. ( As in a line of bbq sauces)The vendor then has the option to pay for demos. (Sometimes I will do a demo if I think the product will sell: the product I use in the demo is credited out to the vendor.) The fee is minimal, in my opinion. If the demo is successful after a period of time, that product will be in demand ( case in point, Soy Vay Teriyaki Sauce) and it gets a side stack....maybe even an endcap. Local vendors who rep their own product reap what they sow. I don't care how wonderful their stuff is, if they don't offer it to be sampled, it won't sell. The aggressive vendors are welcomed in our store. We love to have their product sampled, and are happy to give them prime real estate on the shelf, if they have earned it. There will be anywhere from 4 to 8 vendors sampling on weekends. Basically, our goals are the same....to sell product!!

Don't get me started... Samples are great. I work in a grocery store and have been on both sides of the sample table. We love customers who stop, actually take the time to taste the product and give their opinion. It's excellent feedback for us and , as you say, a great way to get product in their mouths. Even if you don't buy this time, you'll remember what you had and most likely will come back for it some day. Most people are polite and gracious: some even say thank you! The other side of the table, however! Keep in mind that all our demos are manned. I've had customers reach over the table to the product to try to help themselves with their fingers....customers who ask, "What's that?" even though there is a 5x7 tabletop sign giving ALL the details....customers who take something in their mouths, spit it back into the cup and hand it back to me because it was too spicy/too bland/too weird/. Customers who take 4 or 5 because they "have someone in another department who'd just love to try this"(!) And taking first prize is the customer who took offense at a demo person's request to please not take take product in her hands, please wait to be served, and swept everything off the table with her arm and stormed off. Hey: it's a job!

Well, if the term's going to be used in that book, there had better be an accompanying explanation of method.