raji

Well Carnegie Deli isn't exactly cheap.... just order the "Woody Allen", which is half a pastrami and half a corned beef. You can feed your family off of it through the winter. Rather than give you 5 recommendations, I'll give you one that will be echoed by everyone here - The Modern. My meals there have definitely been exciting on a gourmet level. And 53rd between 5th and 6th can't really be much closer...

I think Roberts gets 1.5 Stars if you are a man, and 0 stars if you are a woman, unless you are the type that likes to go to strip clubs. What Robert's lacks in service it makes up for in scenery. It's like the George Costanza theory when he starts eating delicatessen while having sex. Anyway, I have a lot of respect for Adam Perry Lang and have had a great steak at Robert's.

I'm going to hit up an izakaya or at least a Japanese restaurant with part-Izakaya menu (like Katsuhama) tonight, somewhere in the 40s, tonight. A number of you have asked me about this izakaya or that, and I'm wondering if there were any places in particular you guys were curious about, and maybe I can go check them out. We seem to be increasingly indecisive today, but leaning towards Katsuhama, Riki or Donburiya... Not gonna go all the way over to Tsukushi.

So I guess no real comparison to MAS, which sounds like a similar setup at a much higher level

AFAIK it was only good because of it's sushi chef Masato Shimizu, now at 15 East, who left a few years ago. At the same time as his departure, they also supposedly suffered because of their expansion. Based on what I've seen in Japan, the only way a sushi bar can be good and larger than very small is if they have several veteran sushi chefs working in complete harmony, precision and speed. But don't ask me, I never used to go there. When it was good, I still did not consider any downtown sushiya as good as those I would patronize in Midtown such as Sushihatsu, Sushiden and at that time, Sushi Yasuda was still largely under the radar...

Are you sure they just weren't booked up? Because I'm pretty sure they are open until 11pm Mon-Sat. Also worth mentioning is that they have their own entrance now, so pretty much separate from the hotel.. so they've upped their game. And I seriously doubt Shimizu-san would have been the type to have inspired a vendetta by the DoH.

As for the whole Wagyu issue - I recently saw this article which is pretty good - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/style/tm...e/16cattle.html and for those of you who want to try it out, I would recommend buying it and enjoying it at home yakiniku or ishiyaki style, which means you need a tabletop grill or a really smooth stone heated in your oven. Taking the steak and slicing it into one-inch slabs like smaller version of a PL Porterhouse, and then with chopsticks searing it briefly on both sides - you can buy it here https://www.adirectfoods.com/ and much cheaper, here http://www.abeyuki.com/Front/index.cfm?lang=E

Yeah, fair enough - slathering is offensive compared to a slim line of catsup. I don't think it's a one-dimensional sweetness, rather the sweetness plus vinegar factor of ketchup that just ruins the taste of a hot dog for me...

I don't know if I can pinpoint it but I do know that I've had a physical reaction to seeing someone put ketchup on a hot dog since as far back as I can remember; even in elementary school in lower Westchester county where the cafeteria would serve hot dogs (I guess this was before the Clinton initiative), you'd see a couple of the new kids putting ketchup on their hot dogs and stick your tongue out. It might have been implanted in my head by my mother who grew up 10 blocks from Ebbetts field and grew up in Jewish delicatessens. Either way, to taste a hot dog, it was simply unimaginable to see it's taste enhanced by ketchup; even to the uninitiated, it makes about as much sense as whipped cream on a hamburger. One thing I often seek out in other cities, and especially their ballparks, is their version of a toppings-laden hot dog, as there just really isn't a culture of that here. Rather a hot dog is more spare and I'll usually top it with saurkraut, mustard, and maybe relish if I'm in the mood. I also get a wurst-fix at Hallo Berlin once in a while and this supercedes a hot dog jones - do others do this and where do you go?

Yah, as I ended up emailing UE, as a sushi purist in his position(securing a last-minute sushi-bar counter seating), I might have taken the occasion to check out Shimizu, still very popular with Japanese tourists, or perhaps Esashi in the east village. I was living in Japan during Jewel Bako's heyday and surmised to skip it since Masato Shimizu's departure/their renovation... every indication is that that was the correct call, and I'd expect a French tire company to hear about it 5 years late...

I'm surprised you only found a few kinds at Mitsuwa - they usually have a pretty decent spread. That's your best bet in the area, as you can be assured of safety and quality. Really any fish is sushi-grade, especially if it's already been flash-frozen, if it's fresh and has been handled correctly. There doesn't seem to be anything official about the nomenclature. You might just want to buy what you want and give it a quick sear. Or stick with whole fish...

I shudder to think that any one critic would command that sort of influence. If you're saying that Bruni does a better job than any other critic at summarizing the sort of dining trends of the general public that a restauranteur would want to be tuned into, then perhaps he is in fact read that carefully. But I always thought that it was the restaurants that were following trends in an obvious way were more subject to factors like location, design and service, whereas there is always enough of an adventurous audience in NYC for groundbreaking restaurants...

Different Shimizus...

Funny I never really thought of NYC as a hot dog town - of course you want to find the Nathan's or Hebrew Nationals when you are at the stadium vs. the Sysco crap... and I agree with everyone else, there's your grilled and your dirty water dog..... Nathan's would have to be your quintessential NY hot dog, especially with the hot dog eating contest and it's popularity still soaring. And Papaya King was always a standout, but placed into the NYC culinary hall of fame alongside the Soup Nazi and calzones in the bronx thanks to that one episode of seinfeld.. who can forget "but it needs to be a papaya king hot dog!!!" suddenly after that episode aired, the many papaya clones started popping up. dirty water dog is for emergencies mostly....so I guess it's either Nathan's or Papaya King - style Ketchup on hot dog, big no-no in these parts, that's for sure...

ditto. Given it's proximity to NYU, SVA, Parsons, New School, it was responsible for many a "Freshman 15"

Yeah I was going to mention Patsy's, and it's not the only place that has handed down it's traditions to Latino pizzaioli... there are certain institutions that have well instructed or well supervise their latino pizzaioli and have held up their standards, but I think in general your corner slice-shop has gone mexican pizza, and probably suffers as much from slices aging behind glass as they do from something lacking in their preparation..

I was a regular customer of the Rays at 6th and 11th, always considered it the "original" (and, judging by the press posted all over the walls, very much so considered itself the original), and 2 slices of theirs would constitute a full meal and gorging. They would pile on so much cheese that there really was no equal in the city; if you were looking for mounds of cheese. And it tasted great. Then, sometime around 1999, or 2000 or maybe 2002, they started posting up posters about how they were no longer able to offer their cheesy slices because of cheese pricing wars or the influx of the cheap stuff or SOMETHING, maybe someone remembers, and I had to stop going there, the slices were never the same. FG, judging by what you are saying, they've somehow returned to their former glory. I do believe that well into the 90s, every NYC neighborhood had at least one reliably good to great slice shop and that time has since past. Joe's is no longer on the corner and I don't know if it will ever be the same, but I always considered them the best slice on the island. Ray's was a bit of an anomoly because it was a glutton's slice; the pile of thickly grated cheese that topped their pies was stacked in a huge mountain peak towards the center of them. Not a purist's slice but certainly delightful. I have to agree with Doc; you will almost certainly enjoy a better slice when served by a crusty, angry old pizzaola like you still find at Fascati's in Brooklyn Heights. I know it's a bit racist but when I walk in and see Middle Easterns or Mexicans making the pies, even if they've been instructed well by the owner, something is just missing. I think the hot dog shops have proved that if you put out VOLUME of a cheap product, you can still stay in business... so I'm sure the right pizza shop could still survive slinging a constant supply of plain slices... I think the biggest factor, in my mind, is the end result of the Robert Moses-ification of the city - most of your Italian-Americans have since migrated out to Westchester, Long Island, Staten Island, New Jersey, where you can now reliably find the pizza slices of Manhattan past...

Oooh I think many people would disagree with you. Might be a matter of personal preference. It's discussed here too, but this is before Setagaya opened http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=53714&st=30 But I really suggest you try their torinikuramen, and compared to their miso and shio broths, the white, cloudy toriniku broth is simply more satisfying. As to Ippudo, I think their location could potentially be a good one - it's close enough to 3rd avenue heading east, and hopefully would stay late and become a beacon for late-nighters. That's really the time and place for a ramen. Most Japanese would have a bit of a laugh seeing it discussed in gourmet forums...

Right - many people may remember the Ehime Maru, the Japanese training fishing-boat that was hit by a US submarine practicing a surfacing maneouver, and many more, the Kobayashi Maru, the no-win-hypothetical-situation in Starfleet Academy, that only William T. Kirk has won, by cheating on it. Because Todd36 started the thread, I place all blame on him for popularizing the misnomer. I just read the horror story over at Eater - http://eater.com/archives/2007/09/the_doh_chronic_10.php I really wish I had been there, I would have torn this DOH dickhead a new asshole. The sad reality is, he can run rampant over the place like Godzilla and those who work there just have to stand there and take it, lacking enough confidence in their English to at least slow him down. Besides NYC DOH inspectors being notoriously guilty of bribe-taking, what else would explain why this kind of thing hasn't happened to any of the big-box, big-name Japanese/Asian restaurants which all have sushi bars and/or serve tons of sushi? The net result is that one poorly-defended, easy-target/example, meticulously cleaned authentic sushi bar's business is jeopardized, while there are literally hundreds more rip-off joints making diners sick on a daily basis. Why are the cases colder in the US? Because that's how your average, inauthentic sushi bar keeps more lesser-quality fish edible longer. This is completely ass-backwards and I hope there's something we can do about it... and they're not the first in the Japanese business community to get terrorized by these mothers... the Japanese are easy targets as I explain above and also because they tend to have the money to, and are more likely to, pay the fines...

Yeah, I mean, it's not like I insist on making all reservations in the purported native tongue of the restaurant... but it can get pretty dicey in Chinatown proper, and it was looking to be a bit confusing...

Is it safe to assume the guy who answers the phone speak cantonese?... are there any Cantonese speakers out there who could do me a small favor? PM if you can. I ought to call in the reservation today, but the headcount could easily double by Saturday....

Crocodile Dundee II ABORGINE EATING BAT: nahhh... needs garlic!

I seemed to recall that Henry's End in Brooklyn Heights had all sorts of game; a quick google and check this out http://www.henrysend.com/samplegamemenu.htm Kangaroo- Pancetta, Swiss Chard & Port Wine 27.50 I bet it shows up often on the specials... With the closing of Cuzin's on 9th avenue, I've never seen it for sale anywhere else...

Maybe Bruni should learn some Japanese.... http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...5entry1449315 Neither of you are 100% wrong or right "The Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus, (also called Dublin Bay prawn or langoustine), is a slim orange-pink lobster up to 24 cm long..." Anyways, at a restaurant like this, it's much important to distinguish between raw and cooked vs. species...

Kyotofu got headline on Gothamist... apparently they are doing sake tastings http://gothamist.com/2007/09/06/banshaku_at_kyo.php