Steve Klc

Well, not to divert this too far, but DC is a pretty substantial food town, it's huge and sophisticated, it's Paris or San Francisco compared to the likes of a New Bedford; there's only one real cooking school here with like 20 people per class looking for work--and all the chefs in town know they can get decently trained labor cheap from L'Academie. L'Academie has always been totally connected locally. That's good and bad, however, if you're wondering why your hourly wage is so low or as a student your sophistication and talent awareness extends to Chicago or NYC. But for first jobs it is fine. And our scene is getting better. With Kate what I think is interesting--and what I wanted to explore with her--is what I sensed was a real lack of preparation on the school's part before sending these sheep out to the real world for their first job. That isn't dissing Kate, that's exposing something I feel is a flaw, potentially, of that school. Why should Kate have to find this stuff out from us on this thread? Why isn't she finding this out from her instructors and advisors--unless cooking schools ain't what some crack them up to be. As far as J&W or CIA or other large schools turning out students who take jobs at RT or chains or wherever, well, that is why some call them factories. That's neither here nor there. Those jobs and baking jobs where you scoop ice cream all day long and proof and bake off thousands of frozen pre-formed croissants still give you a chance to work cleanly, quickly, and efficiently in a small space. And you can file those volume experiences away to define what it is you don't want to do. The key is maximizing your potential and taking advantage of opportunities wherever you are at the time. There's energy and pleasure to be found in these jobs and down the road, if Kate is lucky, they will also help her develop a kind of easy grace in her cooking.

Vaz--have you ever been to another branch of Wegmans? I went to Bridgewater a few weeks ago and felt it was just a small step behind the Princeton store in overall quality and effort--but that was just a gut feeling and just based on one shopping trip. The Bridgewater versions of Herme's desserts were sloppy, there didn't seem to be the buzz that I feel in Princeton. I wondered if it could be shoppers in Bridgewater were less enthusiastic than shoppers in Princeton. I agree with you about that wine annex in Bridgewater--we wandered in there and were impressed, finding some depth in South American wines and a selection of 7 or 8 good gruner veltliners. Prices are set across the state but the selection at this store was deep and in some categories interesting. We came home with about a dozen bottles.

Steve, so do you find yourself driving to Bethesda and Wheaton or do you cook more because the SS options are so poor? What are your favorite places and why in Bethesda and Wheaton? Anything worth driving out for all the way from Arlington?

Watch? Be prepared to "do" not watch; you offer to help out, just for free. For the "learning experience." Also, fyi, it will help your cause if you try to research a little about the chef in the high-end restaurant you are considering, find out where they went to school, it just might have been J&W. That might give you an in. Were there no teachers or advisors to tell you any of this stuff in school? Did they just say get a job somewhere and see you in the Fall?

Kate--all the standard blah, blah applies about doing the best possible job you can do in whatever job you accept. Rick Tramonto first worked at a Wendys and look how things turned out for him. But, I'm with Tan on this--ask yourself where you see yourself down the road, do you see yourself in a more fine dining atmosphere? There's no reason why you couldn't explore getting into one of those pseudo-fine dining Italian or Portuguese places in New Bedford--like a Candleworks--to trail or stage on your day off just to see what it is like, to get a feel for the management and kitchen there--while you are at RT. Don't let RT beat you--short term, prove to yourself you have the dexterity and organization and speed to improve. Improve quickly. Improve and then move on. Also, consider finding the very best place with the very best chef within a 1 or 1.5 hour drive of New Bedford. And consider spending your day off volunteering there. You are in learning mode--and networking mode--and you cannot start this process too soon. You just might impress somone there with your work ethic, the way you show up early and sweep after your shift, and when your skills catch up down the road, you'll have your foot in the door if you want to return. Ideally, this place will have some national or media cachet which you can leverage to get another job down the road. That's why you'd be willing to drive an hour each way and work for free.

"I agree with you wholeheartedly that the nature of the instructor matters above all else. Which is what led me, in a former iteration, to devote 1 1/2 years training as an uchideshi - literally, inside, direct student, a disciple, if you will, to a Japanese Aikido master. But then, that is most definitely another thread." Or, your first TDG piece once you are inside FCI.

Paul, my awareness of the savory side instructors and curriculum of FCI is way less than the pastry side--though I'd still want to hear what the 1998 professional chef class is doing now if I were considering enrolling--but I have also previously said I feel curriculum is less important than who is actually in class alongside you and teaching you the stuff. Even at FCI instructors are underpaid. An inexperienced instructor--inexperienced either teaching or doing--in a beautiful facility with a great curriculum is worse than a more experienced, very knowledgeable, very passionate instructor working from a stale curriculum in an old kitchen--because that instructor can transcend both the material and materiel. I'd go instructor, networking and surrounding culinary milieu, curriculum, then facilities last. It's not an original perspective, but perhaps more important than curriculum per se is the networking opportunities a school provides and immerses you within--in your case (I believe) you're leaving Chicago to come to NYC and a large part of what you are paying for is for FCI to presumably network you into the best scene going. FCI knows this, you're paying extra for their presumed access to the top dogs. I also really hope you continue to weigh in as this process unfolds for you--are you moving your family with you or are you planning six months and back? You're right, though, I've been lucky to have access to a good number of their graduating classes, to teach in their demo theater and classrooms over time; I've seen how Jacques' course curriculum has evolved, the instructors who have come and gone back to when Dieter Schorner was in charge of the teaching program day to day. I'm very pro FCI--it comes as close to getting it right that I have seen but I have some doubts about the expense-to-value ratio and that doesn't prevent me from also asking if the school has done enough to prepare incoming students for what life will be like once they graduate and have to pay back their loans. Colleen (my wife) was very lucky to have come through under Dieter--a taskmaster who spoke and taught from authority and vast experience--who did push all the students to do better and go further in a kind of old school "this is what it will be like on the job" way--which she was grateful for but which some of the softer career-changers were not, which led to her working for Jacques Torres, and again which goes back to what (I believe) Lesley was trying to get at. That was a school and an instructor that worked for her at that point in time--and prepared her for working cleaner, better and faster in real jobs--she was also a career-changer by the way. But I think Colleen's written here on eGullet that even she wouldn't do it that way all over again--with a few years hindsight, given the total cost combining expense of tuition and relocation and given the realities of the job scene post graduation--not to mention given that Dieter was let go in 1999--and her's was one of the success stories in her class. One person, two at most in each class, got the coveted "stage" with Jacques at Le Cirque--and when you staged with him you worked with him all day long on tasks, beside him, and chatted with him, unlike everyone else in his kitchen. With Dan I was just going by his bios--on his site and on eGullet--which don't mention him coming through one of those short term intensive FCI professional programs. I didn't read what you wrote but if he did in '93--and he's on record today encouraging others like you to go through FCI first, to spend that (now very serious) amount of money rather than travelling and getting work experience in top kitchens--there's another success story and another opinion a prospective student would have to factor in for himself. But 10 years ago when Dan was at FCI and when I was in my little part time program at L'Academie de Cuisine the scene was different--the options, expense and awareness of schools was different. That was before FoodTV hit big, when considering becoming a chef had just begun attracting some cachet and glamor. My sense since that time is that schools, tuitions and enrollments have either increased or sustained, lots of checks have been cashed, and we're about due for a frank re-assessment of just what all these cooking school grads have gone on to, whether they'd do it all again, and whether cooking schools are delivering on their promise. Busboy--I'm not sure what you're wondering about, but most of the cooking schools in the US are designed for professional-leaning, professional-curious students just like you and your wife, aren't that stressful, they're intensive only in the inherent nature of a program like Paul is attending at FCI--designed to get you in and out (and possibly into the field) after 6 months of full time instruction or so. You really have to be dumb as a rock or a disruptive asshole to get "weeded out" once your check clears--and if someone does it will most likely be after 50 to 75% of the tuition money has been commited and cannot be refunded. It's this or what are seen as shorter-term once a week "avocational" classes which may be taught at a very high level by the very same "professional" chef instructors. It's hard for someone who isn't already a chef to just drop into the CIA for a year or less, that isn't the way that school is set up. An associate or bachelor's degree for newbies and specialized shorter-term work for returning pros.

"I've seen many lost to a structure which destroys their sense of worth." Paul, you've inadvertantly just described what I feel happens to too many graduates of the CIA/Johnson & Wales-type schools and also to career-changers once they get out into their real world cooking jobs, especially those who didn't do their homework before choosing and enrolling in a cooking school--who didn't work in restaurants beforehand and knew what would befall them, didn't start off with part-time classes, didn't investigate the job scene after graduation, etc. Now, I'm a little ahead of you in your career-changing arc. 10 years ahead. But we took the same plunge, albeit me at 32 and I was single at the time. I've been very lucky in how it has worked out for me and I'd do exactly the same thing again--except my part-time professional $3,400 program, which allowed me to work all the way through is now more compressed and much more expensive. The only thing I'd do differently is I would have gone into debt to travel to France and Spain right away, that first year, instead of waiting to do so. Like someone afraid to spend their junior-year abroad in college. But that's neither here nor there in the general sense and perspective of this thread. "In short, I find your arguments about the worthlessness and disingenuousness of schools, peopled in the main by deluded wannabes, misguided, to put it mildly." Why? Have you had a lot of experience teaching cooking school students like Lesley or I have, talking to cooking school students in class, after class, at demos, after they've experienced cooking in a restaurant for the first time, interviewing recent graduates or agreeing to take on an intern, or reading e-mails from them after they've moved to their third consecutive job paying 8 dollars an hour with that $25,000 debt still hanging over their head? Plus, I've never said something foolish like schools are worthless--I feel cooking schools of all shapes and varieties can be a great match for the right student and well worth it for many different reasons. I've only called for a re-examnation of what it is various cooking schools offer and how it could and should be more realistically evaluated. A passionate pro instructor is worth his or her weight in gold; too bad they're paid their weight in pennies. "Steve KLC, sorry, I find in particular your "harsh chic" crap simply boring. Anthony Bourdain's got talent, and the compassionate spark to lead his razor. I go to him for "dose of reality" shots, thanks." Tony is an amazing unique talent no doubt and I have my own set of talents and experiences, whatever they may be. The passion and compassion, the perspective and experience you choose to place value in is also your call, of course. But mine comes from an insider's experienced perspective--just last month I was asked by FCI to judge the final exam and practical of their graduating professional pastry student class and had many rewarding and revealing conversations with them. I don't wish them harshness, just realism and honesty. Anything I write here or counseled them on is in service of that based on my experiences. Again--those of you on this thread who are taking this the most personally have the least distance and the least experience to draw on--many of you are in a cooking school at the moment or are about to enter one like Paul, have had little interaction with instructors at other schools and are hardly in the position to evaluate the ability or value of those instructors in some greater context. You will be, however, soon enough. I wish eGullet is around in a few years and I wish you all could weigh back in and talk about what you're doing, whether you are fulfilled, what you are making per hour, whether you would take the same school approach and incur the same debt if you could do it all over again. You're certainly right, Paul, when you say "we all make our fate, and we all live with it" and "School provides one avenue, not the only one; an avenue, however, which I for one find useful at this stage of life, as I've said. I intend to make the experience my own, knowing it's only the beginning. Late in the game? Expensive? Yes. But better than dying saying "what happened?" I'm certainly not advocating denying you the right to choose that destiny. I said much those same words. That also doesn't mean the job performance, philosophy and realism of cooking schools cannot also be examined. "Oh, and long ago, in anticipation of this admittedly somber decision, I read voraciously, and did call a few chefs, older guys like me, graduates all of one of several of the "expensive/intensive career-changer" schools you spoke about, and all with brains and drive (again, being all "smart college educated amateur cooks with the bug"). They unequivocally said, yeah, it was worth it. They haven't given permission to use their names, so I won't; but two of them are doing very well, having won national recognition in Food & Wine, or by the James Beard Foundation. Many more who I haven't talked to are in similar company of career changers who attended these "elitist, amateur-diluted schools," as any look at chef bios will tell you (Blue Hill, anyone)?" What did the Blue Hill bios tell you Paul? What it tells me is Dan didn't go to a cooking school and changed careers by gaining work experience. He got a real college education first then worked his way into the field because he had to--because he had that undeniable spark within--and that is definitely changing the face of cooking here in the states. It seems you too have that spark as did other Chicago chefs, Paul Kahan didn't go to a career-changing cooking school and Rick Tramonto as a teenager took a votech program and then flipped burgers at a Wendys in his first food job. But your paragraph is great--you see, you went into this with your eyes wide open, you did your own research because the schools were not going to do this for you. I presume you worked in a few kitchens as we all have advocated here regardless of our assessment of cooking schools. The question in hindsight isn't necessarily whether school was worth it, it is knowing what these chefs know now, would they do it again or take a different approach? Note also that Mike Anthony went to a school that's an example of the old-school French vocational certificate type Lesley finds value in for chef wannabes. Also, the still open question is how many of the classmates of a Rick Tramonto, a Grant Achatz, a Mike Anthony and those chef friends of yours who were mentioned in Food & Wine and won a Beard award--went on to find some measure of success, personal fulfillment, achievement, satisfaction--and are still doing so? The classmates--not the cover-boys. As you've intimated earlier in this thread--and as I agree with--talent and drive and luck will ultimately win out regardless of where or if you went to school. These we've mentioned are the rare exceptions, though. And that's where your own comments will have even greater value a few years down the road, when you speak from direct personal experience after school, when you can begin to answer those questions about yourself and your classmates and refute whatever harshness you sense on this thread. When those abroad come back to the US to work, when a Nightscotsman returns from his course of study at the French Pastry School in Chicago and can evaluate where he is a few years down the road. As I've said all along, what we need are a few comments from the NeroW, Louisa, Sandra, Paul, beans, Anna W's of the 1998 or 99 class of an FCI or Le Cordon Bleu--and it is those graduates I wish incoming/prospective students of those very same programs could seek out for a greater dose of reality, if the reality I'm presenting seems too harsh. Then even more students would likely be in a position to make a more informed choice, just like you apparently did Paul.

We also shouldn't be getting hung up on the cooking school as college, as University, as academic institution. Please, just stop there. Some of us who know something about the short-term expensive intensive career-changing cooking schools knows this statement is folly: "That said, an institution with a reputation and high standard to maintain will aggressively weed out students who are not capable of meeting that standard. As you rightly state, this process starts with admissions. I don't see why this should not be the case for cooking schools." The cooking schools that actually ARE colleges do operate a little differently--but then that's not what we're talking about on this thread in the main. We're not talking about 4 year cooking schools--that a teenager attends in lieu of going to a real rather than a culinary-based college. We're also not really talking about a formal culinary or hospitality management degree program within a college like NYC Technical College because many of these programs actually are closer to the vocational programs Lesley is talking about. (I think) we're talking most about--and what Lesley has reserved the most derision for-- short term intensive schools with very high tuition who advertise on the Food Network and in glossy cooking magazines that they'll get you out the door working as a chef in no time. Some of us are saying nothing more than the notions of reputation and high standards as they pertain to these cooking schools should be re-examined a little more closely. If I were considering cooking school again--especially one of these $25,000 a year short-term intensive career changing programs that smart college educated amateur cooks with the bug consider all the time--I wouldn't talk to the current chipper students when I visited a school. I'd ask the school for the list of the 1998 class and if and where they're working now. Then I'd call each and every one of them and find out 1) what they're doing, 2) how much they are making at the moment and 3) whether they think the education and the tuition they spent was worth it--whether they'd enroll again if they could do it all over again. That would be an example of the realism the cooking schools should be presenting to prospective students.

Of course you've been welcomed as a stage Sandra. You're an entry level grunt, the industry feeds on those like you fresh out of school looking for real world experience. In fact you pay all this money just to then go out and intern and begin your real instruction, to learn how to really do things in a kitchen. That's part of Lesley's point. Nice work if you can get it, these cooking schools. Interns, externs and various forms of free labor have always made the savviest kitchens perform just a little better. More hands. Better bottom line. El Bulli takes on professional chefs--already with their own careers--as unpaid interns for the season. They work for free for 6 months and are damn lucky to do so. It's harder to make the case a cooking school grad is lucky to step into their first job if they are ill-prepared for the long haul. And what determines this, again, is not how many of your current class gets a entry level job offer paying something but how many of the 1998 class are still working and making something they can live and thrive on. I'm guessing you're still in school--as I said I haven't caught up. I also don't know where you go--but please, the business about the curriculum being the same everywhere is also claptrap. It matters tremendously who your instructors are and how good, how energized, how commited they are--and in my world--again, from the perspective of someone who went to a cooking school and enjoyed it, has cooked for 10 years professionally and still enjoys it, and who also has had the good fortune to teach at several of the cooking schools that have been mentioned on this thread and some not--FCI, NYRS, Peter Kump, NYC Technical College--it is much more about the instructor than the curriculum. Schools want prospective students to think it is about the Jacques Torres or the Nick Malgieri curriculum but it is really about the teacher in the class you actually spend your time with.

Now we're starting to get somewhere and I promise to catch up--but I think we're getting toward what Lesley's real--and valid observation is. There's a problem with our perception of cooking schools--how prospective students and wannabe chefs perceive them--and in many cases the schools are culpable in promulgating these misperceptions. Shaw said "Once a school accepts a student into a program, it has a vested interest in seeing that student graduate. The time to be selective is pre-admission." Slkinsey responds "Hmm... I'm coming late to this discussion, but I would not say that is strictly true. Some schools (I am thinking of top music schools in particular) are structured so that people without the proper motivation and/or talent are encouraged to drop the program or switch to a related course of study." And there's the rub--that discouragement, that active weeding out, ain't happening in the new generation for-profit, private expensive cooking schools. And there is certainly no admission requirement, selective or otherwise. Your check clears, you're on the chef track. Or at least you are allowed to delude yourself that you are. How many times has some wannabe read some supportive claptrap from well-meaning but ultimately misguided souls--usually current cooking school students still flush with hope that their serious cash investment will not go to waste, or graduates no longer actually working as a chef if indeed they ever were called chef, yet still boosting the newbies on with stuff like "you get out of it what you put into it" and "it doesn't matter where you go to school as long as you work hard." I say, prove it. I think Lesley is arguing for the same thing--some sense of realism in how we approach cooking schools and the fact there are very few remaining true vocational cooking schools--what we have are schools teaching avocational classes to amateurs and housewives on one track and on another parallel track teaching pseudo-professional classes to amateurs, housewives and potential career-changers--but that those pseudo-professional classes taught by the same instructors in the same schools with a slightly different curriculum still underwhelm--and don't actually prepare those that graduate realistically to do well in the job of chef or cook or intern as the strictly vocational schools or the guild and apprenticeship systems of France once did. I agree with this and agree with Lesley wholeheartedly. For those touting these pricey possibly privileged schools, tell me about the rest of your class and how many have made it? Tell me about the money you earned, how eagerly you were embraced by the professional food scene and how quickly you paid off your loans. Tell me how long you held out until you bailed out because it was too tough or too unrewarding that you had to find your niche somewhere else. Tell me if you are still hanging on. Tell me about how many Latin line cooks are running or peeling circles around you, grateful for their job, who never went to Cordon Bleu or FCI or wherever. Tell me if you ever got beyond that level in a kitchen before bailing--and whether you were replaced by a culinary school graduate or a dishwasher. It sounds harsh, I know. Professional cooking is harsh. The reason you have to tell me this is the schools will not. Slkinsey continues: "Since a music school is essentially a vocational school (as distinct from a liberal arts school) it seems fairly directly comparable to a professional cooking school. This is to say that the main thrust of these schools is to prepare students to make a living as professional musicians (insofar as this is possible in today's arts economy) or professional cooks. Music schools do not typically accept amateurs or people who are not interested in pursuing a professional life in music into their regular curriculum, and I don't see why cooking schools would either." Except they do. Again, if the check clears. It isn't directly comparable since Lesley's point is, essentially, that our awareness of cooking schools in this country and perhaps like Cordon Bleu is flawed-- that schools are no longer vocational--no longer what they were, which was a substitute for going to University and instead a blue collar vocational alternative for teenagers. See, the cooking schools Lesley is talking about--which a few of us participating on this thread have attended, in my case I've taught at quite a few of them. These schools are for career-changers, college graduates, with money or the willingness to go into debt. Yes there are exceptions, the teenager in an FCI professional class, but the raison d etre is to separate money from people who can afford to have money separated from them, who are willing to give a shot to pursuing their supposed passion. The schools Lesley is talking about FEED on this. And I think we may not be doing a good enough job here on eGullet presenting an accurate perception of the value of these schools. Oh, and it is blue collar until you become a celebrity or star chef. Then your job description changes. This is the key carrot that cooking schools extend and why schools have a vested interest in graduating their students: the percentage of graduates who "get jobs in the field upon graduation" is a very significant inducement, as is touting the number of job offers a graduate has to choose from. I've written this elsewhere but I'd rather see a cooking school reveal what percentage of their graduates are still employed in the field after 5 years and how much of their student loans they've been able to pay back in that time from those great job offers. The answers might surprise you.

Yes, especially those big plasma screens above each little alcove. Very visually striking. I think I tend to agree with Grimes and Cleo--the exhibit should have been more engaging and from a design perspective, well, lets just say the AMNH's own talented art and design people were not involved in preparing this exhibit--that was all the Field. The Museum's own page on the sculptures is here: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/chocolate/.../sculptures.php I also don't think the Shop made the best effort to source out very high quality chocolates, though I have heard the Shop is doing gangbuster business anyway. At least they were giving out samples. That next-to-last video station did the best job I've seen, though, of revealing just how labor-intensive and back-breaking the work is preparing the beans to be shipped. What I've wondered about is the Cafe--can any of those RA-produced chocolate items really be any good? Thank you for that link Aquitane, there's some good stuff there, especially the McKibben Ghana/fair trade piece.

Mise--how often do you empty the hopper of beans, take out those screws, remove the plastic hopper and peek in at the burrs? If you find you have to shake the machine, it might be time to do that and remove some of the grit that has accumulated inside. I bet you won't have to shake again for a long while. In two years of use--how many times have you had to do this? Also, what grind setting do you have it cranked down to?

lou--I usually add back a caramel tuile or crunchy caramel powder somehow, even when I use it as a filling in a cake. even if you present it in a ramekin you can serve this thin tuile above it like a lid. crack through it and everything. very elegant and a la minute and each element is at the perfect temperature. (Herme has a nice picture of this presentation in his French language only--and much better than his US--dessert book with a pistachio creme brulee and a cacao nib tuile "lid.") but yes, many pchefs just refer to the cream or custard that way because it has the texture of the creme brulee cream. don't think too much of the Ramsay dessert book, Jon, he's like 10 years behind anything the French or Spanish are doing in print. But I have the book, give the page reference and I will re-read the recipe. I like yolks in my brulee. I'm also not a fan of Julia's baking, with all apologies to Dorie. If you try to unmold frozen things of different densities, you will discover that hard sugar, creams, gelees all defrost or thaw at different rates and usually do not yield an acceptable end result once thawed. Like a frozen panna cotta with a thin frozen gelee top. You pour the gelee in first, let it set up and then pour the panna cotta in. Freeze and unmold. It comes out fine. But it will not make it to service. You have to be careful how you compose things and you may not be able to get the desired visual effect without some tweaking or compromise.

Fantastic review. The thing is, it does seem Tom has a more inclusive--and more mystical--definition of what umami is. The jinmyo and torakris definitions (following your link) seem a little less inclusive.

Yes, I observe the same thing about beans from different suppliers as they age and grind settings, I bet so does malachi. After I thought it through and re-read your post--and I actually had to go to my Rocky and do it--I did figure out you were not using too little coffee but clicking and clicking all the way around again. I initially thought you were using just the two "cut off" portions for your double shot, which as I said, on my machine is like 12 g and probably on yours as well. I like when you describe "warm coffee pudding." I want to try it. I want to do a dessert which emulates that. However, you have neatly crystallized our distinction--which turns out is small. I do see it, after climbing the mountaintop this far, as highly desirable--for me not necessarily everyone--if I could eliminate the doser chamber and all that clicking around. It might be a mountain out of a mole hill, but it is click click click ad infinitum. Wasted and imprecise effort. Maybe the pastry chef in me--always looking for the cleaner, better, faster way to go about things is my undoing in this case. I mean, those dozen clicks around does get the job done but it has frustrated me since day one when I clicked around for my 36th time and third double. Sure the Rocky is the best option for the money and fine product. It's also flawed. It just kills me to know I can have the same Rocky (doserless) without all that inefficiency and un-necessary imprecision. As I said, I'm going to see if removing that screen gets me a few clicks closer to home.

I wonder if we all wouldn't be a little happier removing that silver piece inside the doser chamber?

I just guessing here MsRamsey, but it is an educated guess from friends and from reading other forums: I think a majority of end users--not salespeople--who have been there, who balked a bit at the price, who over the years worked their way up through the pseudo-espresso coffee ranks and made due with less expensive machines, who resisted buying a $250 grinder, will tell you yes, your entry level machine is the $450 Silvia and $250 Rocky grinder. As a package. There might be adequate grinders now for less but I have a Rocky so I haven't actually stayed on top of LESS expensive grinders. slkinsey, oh I take the lid off as well, and do much the same thing, but then you still have to click, click, click, click, click to get that around to the front, right? All those extra clicks irk me. And two cavities worth--sliced off by that little silver tab--is way less than 17 g--at least on my machine, because I weigh the empty portafilter before and after to the gram. Each pull of mine on the Rocky is 5-6 grams. That's three cavities worth and even then you get into a situation where there's more or less, especially if you want to pull a few doubles in succession. Then you do the short click and a bunch spills onto the base. Have you ever done this? Do you use a Silvia as well? I pull my doubles for 20 seconds and get 2 ounces or do you aim for something else? I like sweeping a little off as well, smoothing with my finger, tamp, knock the edge, and re-tamp the small bit of loosened coffee lightly. This also doesn't address the inherent Rocky defect malachi mentioned which is the Rocky doesn't dose all of its grounds, stuff gets stuck in the corners and edges of each compartment, gets stale without very diligent brushing and sweeping and cleaning. From reading your response, there is also a small chance you are not achieving what the "experts" might say is the ideal grind and amount and tamp for your machine--at a given portion size and time--if you are getting good results with less coffee. I mean, you might be able to get even better results. That was convoluted--but you know what I mean, right? Have you stepped down (grooved) your Rocky to the right setting for you, which is variable (as malachi said with different beans age and humidity) and then done the whole espresso machine process verifying initial weight, grind, tamp, temp, 20-25 second length of pull, 2 oz result they recommend you go through, to determine that your grind setting is actually correct? You probably have. If so, am I also reading you correctly--your method is: keep an empty doser chamber, grind what looks like it would be two heaping cavities worth--this falls into one cavity under the chute and then spills left and right--then stop grinding and then click click click all the way around which would take like 10 or 12 clicks total and like two complete revolutions, no?

Bean-wise I'm dedicated to Caffe Vivace, Graffeo and La Colombe's La Nizza blend, in that order and for different reasons. As Malachi says, at least one of these might seem over-roasted and harsh to some. It is subjective but I also think some blends work well with milk and some I appreciate more straight as espresso. Price-wise it seems better to buy locally. Some day I will undoubtedly get sucked into the whole home roasting experience. Until then, mail order at a premium price seems to keep me the happiest given my alternatives and my palate, even accounting for the shipping delay. In the case of Vivace, you get your beans for espresso on the second day after roasting, in perfect shape. I think we few who have seen the espresso light on eGullet have to take this seriously: "If you can possibly, in any way, find a roaster who is local or an espresso bar who works with a regional roaster where the espresso is high quality, the roasting professional and consistent and the roasting schedule realistic you're probably going to be happier than with any of the larger mail order companies" and name names.

I haven't used that one, Russ, but I can tell you one thing I don't like about the Rocky--each time you put the portafilter under and click the doser lever--you get a pre-set amount of ground coffee. You cannot adjust it, you cannot see it, you can just click and click. In an ideal world, two clicks is exactly precisely what you want, tamp and pull. I want 17 g. Guess what? For me, two clicks is never ever what I want. 3 clicks is too much. So I'm always sweeping some back into the doser reservoir, some grounds are always spilling out of the filter basket by the third click. The halfway click isn't consistent enough. I think I'd prefer complete control--no doser--and just have the amount I visually "sense" I need ground directly into the portafilter OR something like the Mini which you seem to able to adjust the amount of each dose--a gram or two more, a gram or two less--so each click gives you what you want. But that convenience comes at a $125 premium above the cost of the Rocky; the Rocky doserless model is essentially the same price as the doser model, roughly $250-260. But then I keep a digital gram scale near my silvia just to check things from time to time and shot to shot if I'm not getting the performance I want.

Bau, page 274. Except I wouldn't add the gelatin before you cook it to 185, I'd add it after you pull it off the heat.

Malachi--I've never seen a Mazzer Mini in the flesh--it does appear significantly bigger than the Rocky, is it? What do you have the Mazzer doser adjustment set to release with each pull--in grams? What did you sell your used Rocky for--$125-150?

By whizzer grinder, Kenk, if you mean one of those $15-20 Krups-like grinders, you might want to beg, borrow or steal a more expensive grinder--something like the Rocky or the Mazzer Mini--and live with it for awhile. You might just discover a "more consistently more excellent" excellent. (When you say NW, have you tried the two espresso varieties from Caffe Vivace?)

Tan, I think everybody has a slightly different approach and recipe depending on how they plan to use it, the texture they want, but yes, stovetop "creme brulees" usually are cooked like a creme anglaise, and have some extra percentage of yolk and/or gelatin added. (I have seen similar creams cooked in the microwave then whizzed with an immersion blender; I've seen it thickened up to temperature "poached" in an oven and then whizzed with an immersion blender.) You can then pour this into ramekins to set up, that's how a lot of hotels do their brulees. There can be differences in unctuousness--say you want to do a creme brulee napoleon a la Michel Richard--you bake sheetpans of brulee the traditional way, then cut and lift off little squares of the cooled brulee to form a plated dessert a la minute napoleon with caramelized phyllo. You'll have to compare how your stovetop version--which you could potentially mold into shapes, freeze, thaw and use--does side by side. Your time with Bau will be well spent. An excellent, influential book.

Rancilio Silvia, Rocky grinder, La Marzocco filter basket as well. If anyone wants to trade up to my Rocky so I can trade up to the doserless Rocky, PM me. Uhhm, I wonder if there's any eGulleteer out there with a Sylvia in the market for a better grinder...