BryanZ

Casa Mono, Bar Room at The Modern immediately come to mind if you want to try a bunch of different and high quality items.

I think the uber-Asian hot water boilers are even better. Perhaps not the best for the purists but for everything else it's much faster.

Generally, I don't like to use bottled sauces when cooking at home. But at school, Sriracha is a staple for dorm room cooking. It adds garlic, spice, and a bit of sweetness to nearly everything it touches.

I enjoyed Super Taqueira in Durham. An enjoyable place for a quick and cheap meal.

To the best of my knowledge, the proper way to say it is za-GAT. That's how everyone in the office says it and there's a poster that demonstrates the proper pronunciation on the walls.

Is this some kind of charity event? It looks pretty sweet, but $750 is a pretty hefty amount of money.

I'm not explicitly defending Zagat, but its rating system has nothing to do with Tim or Nina or anyone in the company. Trust me, I know. Zagat is fundamentally a survey company, relying on the opinions of anonymous and numerous others to create some numerical rating. The Zagat system is actually be similar to Michelin's. Zagat uses the same 0-3 scale for its respondents, only averages it out to include decimals so that there may be a greater continuum of scores. This continuum, and its easy to read format, is what makes Zagat accessible to the greater public. Where Zagat fails, however, is that its ratings system is not at all normalized. The same individual who rates Union Square Cafe is not necessarily the same individual who rates Masa or ADNY. With that said, this lack of normalization is the weakness of the Zagat system, not the subjective influence of Tim Zagat, as RobinsonCuisine claims. The Michelin NYC Guide is by no mean perfect and is, in my opinion, disappointing, but it still presents the most trusted and ambitious collection of NYC restaurants available.

While in person, I would argue that the drinks you called martinis are not martinis, it is good to see that you are in print. You may also want to consider other drink styles like wine spritzers--those can certainly be in a college student's budget. But, I remember drinking in college being an exercise in getting drunk and partying. That's why I drank so much Jaegermeister and RedBull. Together. In the same glass. ← I more than acknowledge that none of my martinis are actually true martinis. It was simply a semantic decision to make the drinks seem more accessible and familiar.

With 3, 3-star Michelin restaurants Ducasse can say whatever he wants.

Thanks for the help and inspiration everyone. My piece ran today. I stuck to drink that had autumn themes but am planning on doing different themes for later issues. In case anyone is interested in reading: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/displa...d5d&image_num=1

It seems like Whitetrufflechick (WTC) brings up some more than fair points. Just because a restaurant is crushed, a 4-hour 5-course meal is unacceptable. Everyone has their own standards of judgement, and I dont thing WTC was being unreasonable. With that said, her post still doesn't deter me from wanting try the place. If I have an experience similar to dRock, Venue will have exceeded my expectations. Based on what's been said about this restaurant, it seems to fall into the realm of ambivalence that a lot of similar establishment do. wd-50 is loved by some but hated by others, Alinea and Moto got blasted by Mariani but are widely understood to be two of the most avant garde restaurants in the country. If Venue is delivering cutting edge food, some of the NJ-esque service flaws can be overlooked. If not, it's simply another NJ restaurant floundering while trying to do too much.

I feel cheated. A lot of the 1-stars seem like a completely random smattering of some of the city's moderately respected restaurants. Michelin seems to have put out a really disappointing effort with this initial guide.

That is something to be proud of. Excessive, yes. Unncecessary, yes. But awesome nonetheless.

See my last post. One might assume that initially, but it becomes quite clear it's all really a farce. I've seen the vintage aprons from Anthropologie that they mention in the article and they're not really for cooking. It's all about this romantic idea of marriage, chivalry, and the the woman as a "lady". A "lady" to the extent that she is to be waited on hand and foot. At least that's the feel I got from the article. edit to add: There's this overlying theme of dependency that many young women (in the article) seem to embrace. That's the basics of it, I guess. edit part deux: Yeah, well I come from the latter camp. It's not that uncommon.

From the fascinating NYT article: If we apply these sentiments to traditional household gender roles, what does it mean? Does this mean that young women are starting to willingly return to the household responsibilities of their mothers and grandmothers (i.e. willingly cooking and cleaning)? Or does it imply that young women are creating a new retro-inspired role for themselves, relying on men to provide for and protect them in a romantic sense, but shunning tradtional household responsibilites? I am led to believe it is the latter. This article brings up an issue that hasn't really been discussed yet. Perhaps women actually aren't moving into the workforce as rapidly as most people assume and are embracing their "femininity" instead. It seems that this idea of the new-age housewife is more than just a small minority. I think it's kind of unsettling, but to each woman her own. Read the article, it's long but very interesting.

It wouldn't just be hypocritical; it would be blindingly stupid. If you ever meet a woman who takes that position, you might want to address it with her. ← I get in trouble for calling people out.

I think that's a good way to put it. But I was just remarking it could be hypocritical for a woman to believe in the old precepts of chivalry while embracing her inherent rights to equality.

I called up the Michelin people and they said it's shipping on Nov. 3rd for sure from their main publishing house in Greeville, South Carolina.

Over the weekend I crafted another long post in reference to some of the interesting points gul_dekar brought up. But, alas, it was somehow lost (or maybe I just hit preview instead of post. Regardless, that's water under the bridge. But I did think of something recently that's not directly related to this thread's headline but deals with similar implications. What do women think of the trend "Men Aren't Chivalrous". In other words, I think it's hard to deny that while women have made strides toward complete equality in society, men have also become less chivalrous in the traditional sense. Do women on this board see it as a bad thing that men aren't as willing to hold open doors and pay for dates? I'm not judging people here, but that type of traditional behavior is inherently sexist and reveals many of the double-standards in current gender roles and relations. Is it okay to complain that men don't treat women like "ladies"? This isn't a rant, but something I'm honestly curious about. I kind of think it's sad that chivalry is on the decline, though I also feel that women should be the literal equals of men. Just some thoughts on how issues of sexism brought up here can be applied outside of the food world.

Amazon isn't really working for me. One second they say the estimated ship date is 10/31, but when I changed my shipping options it suddenly changed to 12/29. I called up my local bookstore and they were confused about it, too. The local Barnes and Noble said they wouldn't have it until Thanksgiving.

That would be ideal, but I can't exactly go out and try mixed drinks myself. I couldn't get the school newspaper to pay for an underaged kid to go out and try drinks. I'll have to stick with trying to make them myself.

Anecdotal evidence as an oxymoron??? An anecdote is simply a story, so I'm using my personal stories as evidence to back up my claims. That makes sense to me. As has been said numerous times, no one claims that women can't cook by their nature. Thousands of years of anthropological evidence show that women traditionally do cook. It was the journalists who placed that headline on the article. If nothing else, it was the editors who came up the title who were trying to generate publicity.

I totally understand that sentiment. But at my age, I want to constantly be pushed and challenged. I don't frequent many of New Yorks high 2-star and 3-star venues because I find a lot of them to be boring. Excellent food, yes, but still boring. If I want an exquisite piece of raw fish, I'll go to Yasuda and enjoy it in it's purest form. If I want a good steak I'll spend $25-30 to get a piece of dry-aged USDA Prime and prepare it myself; I don't necessarily want to spend $100 on a meal I know I can get somewhere else. With that said, I love and have no problem spending exorbitant amounts of money on places that are the best at what they do. For example, I'd rather have one tasting menu at Per Se or Daniel or JG than 3 meals at Cru or Grammercy Tavern. Similarly, I'd rather have (and pay for) one meal at wd-50 and be pushed to figure out Wylie's inspiration for a dish, than eat another sauteed piece of foie gras or poached salmon with wild mushrooms.

Funky, they certainly are. I might do something like Jean Georges' "Simple to Spectacular" but for cocktails. Start of with a classic recipe and do a couple variations that are progressively more outlandish.

A lot of wd-50's allure is in the creativity and challenge it offers to diners. Although I've certainly had "better" dishes at "better" NYC restaurants, wd-50 arguably remains my favorite in city because of the restaurant's feel and philosophy. A dining experience isn't necessarily measured by the taste of the dishes alone and I think hshiau does a good job of pointing that out.