BryanZ

Well I feel like a dumbass. I swear, I read the Gatekeepers, too. My apologies.

Thanks for the menus and pictures, Augie. Chef Kahn's desserts really make me wish I had but a semblance of pastry skillz.

Indeed. I don't know where people got the impression you could go a la carte in the main dining room.

Dude, I feel so bad for you. A big formal dinner and finals is clearly what SV was made for.

I liked the Le Bernardin one. Cool image, good questions. Loved his commentary on dealing with the customers himself rather than letting it get to Chef Ripert.

Is there even an a la carte menu in the main dining room? I don't think there is. Also, Augieland just made a great post about the GR Chef's Table in his blog. Certainly worth checking out.

There's a very interesting academic piece entitled "The deglobalization of food markets? consumer perceptions of safe food: the case of Norway" that's worth Googling for those looking for deeper study in this topic.

I caught this battle a couple weeks ago and was proud to see Chef Blais go out there give it his all for "Team Modern." Although Wylie and Richard have not reigned supreme, and I'm not sure if the Cantu battle has aired, it's great to see modern cooking on a channel that is decidedly not. I was watching the battle with my roommates and when they saw Chef Blais using a lot of the same techniques I use, they suddenly thought me (a little) less crazy. Certainly a great battle to watch for two very different takes on an interesting theme ingredient.

Indeed these are very Adria-esque platings, perhaps more so than any other I've seen in NY. While I'm perhaps a fervent modernist, I'm still not entirely convinced by this style of plating. Striking and beautiful, yes, but even I feel as if there might be too much going on and not enough aesthetic focus. This is by no means a criticism of Chefs Kahn, Adria(s), Stupak et al, but rather a gut reaction. Regardless, I'm very, very excited to eat here now and will do so in the next couple weeks. Now that we've have a Varietal thread, can you divulge approximate prices, Doc?

Great pictures. The Bar food seems to be more modern than that in the main dining room.

As you wish. Water Royal on ICA as seen in the Chron

Perhaps a mod wants to split this off into a new thread for Varietal. Anyway, you should get your menu up on Menupages. I want to see what I'll be getting into and if I can swing it in the next couple weeks. At the least I'll come in for desserts. jkahn or docsconz, can you give me prices? Do you have a tasting menu, can I create one?

I use xanthan for my foams because it gives them some substance and stability while still retaining lightness. I don't know about five minutes though, plus time for eating. I don't have exact quantities because I work in very small quantities in general. And here's your grief about trying to serve a hot foam during a large plated function!

Shit. I'm back. How timely. And, yeah, from the above.

Wait until you see the pigs. And the baby ones being castrated. That's tough to watch.

I thought the theme was ostrich. Wasn't that what the previews showed? I didn't catch the episode. Was I dreaming?

This has been said a million times before but still we get into these semantic debates. If only people would understand the above and accept this literal definition there would be a lot less BS. MG, again in the literal sense, is completely different from hypermodern cooking. Though, of course, they're by no means mutally exclusive. I'm out.

If it was from a chain restaurant like that there's probably something like xanthan or guar gum in it to thicken.

Nice report on Utah, Doc. I've spent a lot of time there as a kid over the holidays, eating just about everywhere. You missed Crown Burger; I think you would've like it.

The temperature of the food is raised, that of the water is lowered, until it reaches equilibrium. In a braise, you can heat the water up to 180 degrees F, put in a 250 degree oven, and the water temperature will not go up for hours because the cold(er) raw food is keeping the temperature down. Also keep in mind that the specific heat capacity of water is much higher than air, so again, in an oven, things are moving very slow - that's also the reason convection ovens work so much faster than conventional - the air is moving around, so essentially you have more heated molecules coming into contact with the food to transfer their energy and heat it up. Once you reach an equilibrium between the water temperature and the temperature of the food, then the temp will start to go up, however by this time usually your food is cooked or close to it. Cooking is all physics and chemistry... ← I agree with you, but to say that over the course of a multi-hour braise, the liquid in a cooking vessel in a 250F oven never boils seems to be false. Also, many well-known chefs "braise" at 350F+. But then again this gets into the semantics of cooking techniques and how they're used in common parlance. Thanks for the clarification though. Personally I think sous vide is different than braising, but again that's a matter of semantics and not suited for this thread.

Chef Banta, I'm not sure if you were cooking when I was at the Metropolitan a couple years ago but you actually served me my first ever savory foam. It was a potato puree that I realize is quite pedestrian now, but it opened my eyes to potatoes+lightness=tasty in a way gnocchi or Robuchon-style potatoes never could. Anyway, did you do a normal s'fer or an inverse for the mushroom? Do you mind sharing your proportions? It's great to hear of people using modern techniques in SLC. I've spent a lot of time out there for family reasons and always thought your restaurant was leading the way in creative cuisine in the city.

That would defeat the whole purpose of an s'fer, however. You shouldn't be able to breach the outer gel without unleashing a flow of liquid from within. Again, if we going to play we need more details.

What people have tried is freezing the alginated liquid before being dipped in the CaCl. Still, results have been less than successful and you end up with what's effectively a flattened sphere.

Actually, I'm pretty sure he said he was "soignee." In this case, refined and elegant.

85C-ish on the bath?